UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


0' 


ov^^- 


FROM 


OPITZ  TO  LESSING: 


A  STUDY  OF  PSEUDO-CLASSICISM 
IN  LITERATURE. 


BY 


THOMAS  SERGEANT  PERRY, 

AUTHOR  OF   "  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  IN  THB 
KIGHTEENTH   CENTURY." 


BOSTON: 

JAMES   R.  OSGOOD  AND   COMPANY. 

1885. 


Copyright,  T884, 
Bv  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry. 


All  Rights  Reserved. 


STBRBOTTPED  BT 
C.  J.    PETERS  *  SON,   BOSTON. 


W.    D.    HOW  ELLS. 


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PREFACE. 


The  aim  of  this  book  is  to  give  some 
few  of  the  many  available  proofs  that  the 
different  nations  of  modern  Em^ope  have 
passed  through  very  nearly  the  same  ex- 
perience in  literatm'e  since  the  Renaissance. 
The  course  of  each  separate  nation  has  been 
described  by  hosts   of  writers :  in  France 

c5      the  early  glow  of  the  Pleiad,  the  chastening 

a 

H      correctness   of  Malherbe  and  Boileau,  the 

4j>      gradual  romantic  revival ;  in  England,  the 
•i      fadinor    out    of   the    Elizabethan    fervour, 
2      the  precision  of  Dryden  and  Pope,  and  the 
^      modifications   that    led    to   the   revival    of 
poetry;    the    similar   course    of  events    in 
Germany,  —  all  these  things  have  been  set 
forth  in  countless  volumes.     The  facts  once 
established,  it  becomes  possible  to  detect  a 
harmony  which  it  would  be  rash  to  call  co- 
incidence.    The  next  thing  is  obviously  to 


VI  PREFACE. 

see  how  closely  the  various  nations  kept 
step  together.  Until  this  is  done,  our 
knowledge  is  fragmentary  and  incomplete; 
the  relation  of  different  authors  to  one  an- 
other is  often  only  intelligible  when  we  see 
it  more  brilliantly  illustrated  in  another 
country.  After  this  work  is  finished,  there 
will  remain  the  task  of  ascertaining  ex- 
actly to  what  extent  each  nation  modified 
the  general  course  of  literary  movement; 
what  was  the  national  equation,  so  to  speak, 
of  each  country.  When  this  is  ascertained, 
the  period  treated  will  be  really  known; 
until  then  it  will  not  be  fully  comprehended. 
This  volume  is  offered  to  the  public  as  a 
slight  essay  to  show  how  like  were  some  of 
the  early  movements  in  different  countries. 

T.   S.  p. 
Boston,  July  28, 1884. 


FROM  OPITZTO  LESSING:    ^ 

A  STUDY   OF    PSEUDO-CLASSICISM. 


CHAPTER  I. 

What  we  include  in  the  term  *^  German 
Literature  "  may  be  conveniently  assumed  to 
have  begun  with  Lessing  ;  but,  in  order  to 
understand  what  that  eminent  writer  did  in 
the  way  of  clearing  the  ground  for  his  suc- 
cessors and  of  laying  the  foundations  on 
which  they  were  to  work;  it  is  important  to 
take  a  look  backwards,  and  to  see  what  had 
been  done  and  what  left  undone  before  his 
day.  Only  in  this  way  can  we  appreciate 
him  at  his  proper  value,  and  an  examination 
of  this  sort  may  also  be  of  service,  by  show- 
ing us  that  the  study  of  literature,  which  is, 
after  all,  only  the  study  of  one  part  of  his- 


2  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

tory,  is  fruitful  even  when  it  requires  of  us 
that  we  give  our  attention  to  men  of  mod- 
erate merit,  to  writers  who  are  praised  when 
they  are  called  second-rate.  There  is  some- 
thing fascinating  in  studying  merely  the 
greatest  men,  and  in  passing  over  the  rest 
without  thought ;  but  literature  cannot  be 
understood  in  that  way,  any  more  than  bot- 
any can  be  learned  by  studying  nothing  but 
Japanese  lilies  and  Jacqueminot  roses,  or 
modern  history  by  giving  all  our  attention 
to  ISTapoleon  Bonaparte,  Washington,  and 
Lincoln.  In  literature,  the  man  who  accom- 
plishes anything  great  is  the  one  man  who 
succeeds  where  countless  others  fail  ;  and 
our  study  will  be  of  little  profit  if  it  does 
not  teach  us  how  much  greater  are  the  long 
and  silently  prepared  movements  than  any 
brilliant  performance,  how  the  most  striking 
thing  about  any  genius  is  its  inevitableness, 
and  that  it  cannot  be  understood  without 
the  comprehension  of  the  whole  spii'it  of  the 
time.     It   is  to  the  Germans  that  we  owe 


FROM    OPITZ    TO    LESSING.  6 

the  statement  of  this  principle,  and  it  is  only 
just  to  illustrate  its  truth  by  investigating 
what  their  writers  have  contributed  to  the 
world's  delight.  We  shall  see,  then,  that 
literature  is  not  something  remote  from 
human  interest,  although  the  way  in  which 
it  is  often  studied  and  sometimes  practised 
may  encourage  this  unsound  view.  Let  us 
begin  with  the  principle  that  literature  is 
not  a  thing  apart  from  life,  but  is  humanity 
recording  its  hopes,  thoughts,  fears,  and 
emotions,  not  humanity  composing  rhetori- 
cal exercises,  except,  to  be  sure,  at  moments 
when  rhetorical  exercises  are  the  legitimate 
expression  of  corrupt  taste  and  artificial  en- 
thusiasms; and  even  these,  when  viewed  in 
this  way,  acquire  new  interest  in  our  eyes. 

Although  the  modern  literature  of  Ger- 
many begins  only  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
last  century,  there  had  been  a  time  when 
Germany  was  in  the  van.  Even  if  the 
minnesingers  were  second  to  the  Proven9al 
troubadours,   they   were    second    to    them 


f:  FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

alone.  Later,  when  England  was  without 
commerce  or  manufactures,  before  the  age 
of  Elizabeth,  Germany  was  a  rich  and  pow- 
erful country.  At  the  beginning  of  the  six- 
teenth century  th^  German  artists  were  the 
only  rivals  of  the  Italian.  The  Reformation, 
which  was  the  second  great  modern  move- 
ment, was  the  work  of  Germany  alone. 
Learning,  art,  progress,  wealth,  flourished 
in  that  great  country.  How  was  it  that 
these  things  were  lost?  How  did  it  happen 
that  this  mighty  country  was  shattered  into 
a  host  of  petty  and  powerless  provinces, 
without  distinctive  trait  or  perceptible  in- 
fluence, for  something  like  two  hundred 
years?  While  England  stepped  forth  in 
the  age  of  Elizabeth  to  the  position  of  the 
great  Protestant  country,  with  a  literature 
that  has  been  rivalled  only  by  Greece  in  its 
brief  flowering  time  ;  and  Spain  won  do- 
minion over  half  of  Europe;  and  France  be- 
came the  lawgiver  in  literature,  politics, 
philosophy,  and  fashions,   to   all   civilized 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  5 

nations;  and  even  Holland,  the  meagre  little 
country,  defeated  the  Spaniards  and  founded 
something  like  a  world-empire,  —  Germany 
sank  from  its  high  place  into  a  mere  inco- 
herent mass  of  principalities.  Its  work 
seemed  forever  closed.  So  true  is  this,  that 
there  seems  a  chasm  between  the  Germany 
of  the  Reformation  and  the  Germany  of  the 
last  century,  and  a  chasm  which  had  swal- 
lowed wealth,  art,  literature  —  in  a  word, 
every  sign  of  prosperity.  The  history  of 
the  decadence  of  Germany  is  most  painful 
reading.  The  briefest  possible  summary  of 
it  will  show  the  gradual  steps  of  material 
and  intellectual  decline.  There  is  no  need 
of  fearing  that  a  description  of  it  does  not 
belong  to  literary  history.  It  is  only  by  re- 
freshing our  knowledge  of  these  facts  that 
we  can  understand  why  a  blight  fell  upon 
letters  and  arts  for  so  long  a  time,  and  by 
what  measures  the  greater  man  who  followed 
attempted  to  undo  its  mischievous  effects. 
We  know  from  our  own  experience  that  our 


6  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

own  study  or  thought  is  affected  by  all  sorts 
of  external  incidents.  If  there  is  some  one 
ill  in  the  next  room,  or  if  the  town  is  full  of 
excitement,  our  work  is  interrupted,  and 
what  is  true  of  every  person  is  obviously 
true  of  all  persons.  It  is  only  by  knowing 
these  external  conditions  that  we  can  be- 
gin to  comprehend  what  the  German  writers 
said  and  did. 

In  the  first  place,  the  Keformation  tore 
the  country  into  two  bleeding  factions. 
The  Church  of  Rome  was  far  too  powerful 
to  yield  its  supremacy  without  a  bitter 
struggle  in  which  freedom  of  conscience 
was  met  by  another  strong  principle,  the 
sense  of  obedience,  a  feeling  that  had  so 
long  been  nurtured  that  it  had  acquired 
enormous  power.  Moreover,  the  Reforma- 
tion was,  in  a  great  measure,  the  result  of 
the  new  spirit  of  the  Renaissance,  —  a  spirit 
which  had  grown  in  Germany  more  than 
elsewhere,  because,  before  the  discovery  of 
America,   Germany  had  been  one   of  the 


PROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSLN^G.  7 

main  avenues  by  which  the  modei-n  spirit 
made  its  way  from  Italy  to  the  rest  of 
Europe.  But  when  America  was  discov- 
ered, the  Mediterranean  lost  its  central 
position,  and  the  Atlantic  Ocean  at  once 
became  the  new  and  larger  field  for  mari- 
time enterprise.  It  was  a  change  that 
affected  the  great  Hanseatic  cities  of  Ger- 
many in  exactly  the  same  way  as  the  open- 
ing of  the  vast  wheat  fields  of  the  "West 
has  affected  the  agriculture  of  ^ew  Eng- 
land. Communication  with  India,  which 
before  this  had  been  made  through  Alex- 
andria and  Venice  into  German}^,  now  fol- 
lowed the  longer  but  more  profitable  voyage 
around  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  thus  rob- 
bing Germany  of  its  previous  share  of  a 
most  profitable  trade.  We  see  at  once  the 
centre  of  power  abandoning  Germany  and 
moving  to  the  west  of  Europe.  Holland, 
England,  Portugal,  France,  and  Spain, 
secured  what  Germany  lost,  and  that  un- 
happy country  was  left  to  carry  on  a  most 


^ 


8  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSIN^G. 

momentous  struggle  with  swiftly  dwindling 
forces.  With  the  decay  of  the  material  im- 
portance of  the  country  came  what  we  have 
all  seen,  on  an  infinitely  smaller  scale,  in 
l!^ew  England  towns  and  villages  that  once 
were  prosperous,  and,  in  their  prosperity, 
full  of  energy,  and  now  are  lifeless  accumu- 
lations of  empty  houses  and  shiftless  citizens. 
Then  in  Germany  came  the  Thirty  Years' 
War  (1618-48).  This  was  a  terrible  blow 
to  the  country.  We  may  well  doubt  whether 
in  the  whole  history  of  modern  times  there 
is  a  chapter  of  such  hopeless  gloom  and 
terrible  tragedy.  Let  us  bear  in  mind, 
however,  that  it  must  not  receive  all  the 
blame  for  the  decay  of  Germany;  it  has 
enough  to  endure  without  that.  The  de- 
terioration had  begun  before  hostilities 
broke  out.  War  is  not  always  merely 
destruction  ;  not  always  are  the  bravest 
slain  without  good  to  the  country  and  to 
the  world.  We  ourselves  know  that  even 
out  of  civil  war  there  may  rise  a  grander 


FROM   OPITZ    TO  LESSING.  \) 

comprehension  of  patriotism,  fuller  material 
growth,  a  broader  view  of  a  nation's  duties 
and  responsibilities;  but  the  Thirty  Years' 
War  was  like  a  plague  or  an  earthquake. 
The  prosperity  of  the  country  received  a 
blow  from  which  it  did  not  recover  for  over 
two  centuries.  A  few  statistics  will  make 
this  clear.  In  Wurtemberg  the  population 
was  reduced  from  400,000  to  48,000;  in 
Frankenthal,  from  18,000  to  324.  Else- 
where more  than  half  the  houses,  and  more 
than  two  thirds  of  the  inhabitants,  had 
jDcrished;  in  yet  another  place  but  one  tenth 
of  the  population  survived.  In  Berlin  there 
were  left  only  three  hundred  citizens.  And 
these  figures  make  no  account  of  the  horrors 
of  the  conflict  for  the  living.  A  flame  of 
anarchy  had  passed  over  the  whole  country, 
and  consumed  all  feeling  of  security  and 
mutual  dependence.  The  country  was  left 
in  ruins,  and  moral  confidence  was  almost 
wholly  gone.  To  be  sure,  the  leaders  made 
what  seemed  to  them  their  profit  out  of  the 


10  FROM   OPITZ   TO  LESSING. 

general  confusion;  but  the  use  they  made 
of  it,  as  we  shall  soon  see,  was  of  a  most 
unfortunate  kind. 

Already,  at  the  time  of  the  Reformation, 
the  theologians  had  confounded  the  intel- 
lectual zeal  of  the  Renaissance  with  the 
perils  coming  from  the  Roman  church,  and 
denounced  them  both  with  bitterness.  The 
Humanists  were  looked  upon  as  public 
enemies.  The  universities  had  shut  their 
doors  to  new  truths  and  clung  obstinately 
to  the  old  scholasticism.  The  Renaissance 
had  been  rather  a  theological  movement 
than  one  of  literary  and  artistic  fervor,  as 
it  was  in  other  countries,  although  Hans 
Sachs,  Durer,  and  Cranach  showed  that 
the  tide  was  turning  in  this  direction,  in 
spite  of  the  more  exclusively  theologic  bent 
which  Luther  gave  to  it.  But  this  advance 
was  of  course  lost  in  the  Thirty  Years' 
"War.  When  the  country  at  last  found 
peace,  a  new  generation  had  grown  up  that 
had  known  nothing  but   turmoil,  and  the 


FROM   OPITZ   TO  LESSIIfG.  11 

work  of  civilization  had  almost  to  begin 
anew  at  a  remote  point.  The  rulers  and 
the  nobility  had  wholly  lost  touch  with  their 
own  country  and  begun  to  model  them- 
selves after  the  French,  who  then,  under 
Louis  XIII.  and  XIV.,  were  imposing  their 
standard  of  taste  on  all  Europe,  and  this 
change  is  one  that  requires  our  closest 
attention. 

We  must  remember  that  the  Gallomania 
which  henceforth  prevailed  in  Germany 
cannot  be  explained  simply  as  the  result 
of  more  intimate  acquaintance  with  the 
French  who  had  taken  part  in  the  war; 
nor  was  it  by  any  means  peculiar  to  Ger- 
many alone.  To  be  sure,  it  struck  deeper 
there  than  elsewhere.  Every  princeling 
maintained  his  court  like  a  miniature  Ver- 
sailles; he  generally  constructed  a  little 
fortress  which  was  garrisoned  by  a  hand- 
ful of  soldiers,  who  were  drilled  like  the 
mighty  armies  of  France.  Germany  was 
spotted  over  with  these  reduced  copies  of 


12  FKOM    OPITZ    TO    LESSING. 

its  great  neighbor,  when  every  vice  and  ex- 
travagance that  were  destroying  the  foun- 
dations of  a  mighty  kingdom  were  keeping 
the  impoverished  Germans  in  misery.  Au- 
gustus the  Strong,  of  Saxony,  spent,  on  a 
single  festival,  an  amount  that  is  variously 
estimated  as  from  one  to  five  millions  of 
thalers;  on  another,  about  four  millions. 
Karl  Eugene,  of  Wiirtemberg,  maintained  a 
suite  of  two  thousand  persons.  Augustus 
the  Strong  had  set  five  hundred  peasants 
and  two  hundred  and  fifty  miners  to  work 
destroying  a  forest  in  order  to  make  a 
pleasure-ground.  Their  more  serious  em- 
ployments and  interests  may  be  gathered 
from  the  mention  of  a  struggle  which  agi- 
tated the  princely  houses  who  envied  the 
privilege  that  the  electoral  (Jcurfurstliclie) 
ambassadors  enjoyed  of  having  their  chairs 
on  the  same  carpet  as  the  Imperial  Chief 
Commissioner.  Finally,  their  princely 
hearts  glowed  with  manly  pride  when  di- 
plomacy decided    that    their    ambassadors 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSIN^G.  13 

might  sit  with  the  two  front  legs  of  their 
chairs  on  the  fringes  of  the  carpet. 

The  whole  country  swarmed  with  officials. 
Positions  were  bought;  professorships  were 
sometimes  the  property  of  minors.  The 
two  thousand  principalities  into  which  Ger- 
many was  divided,  suffered,  although  not 
equally,  from  these  miseries.  As  Bieder- 
mann  has  pointed  out,  the  whole  population 
was  divided  into  two  classes  —  the  official 
class  and  their  victims.  Everyone  tried  to 
become  an  official,  and  if  he  could  do  that, 
his  interest  led  him  to  keep  the  others 
down.  The  full  particulars  of  this  condition 
of  affairs  cannot  be  given  here,  but  it  will 
be  readily  seen  that  the  country  was  in 
a  wretched  state.  We  shall  come  across 
countless  instances  of  the  way  in  which  this 
spirit  manifested  itself  in  literature,  and  we 
shall  notice  how  great  is  its  divergence 
from  that  of  the  early  humanism.  Yet  this 
divergence  is  to  be  noticed  in  every  country 
of  Europe.    In  England  the  first  inspiriting 


14  FROM   OPITZ   TO  LESSESTG. 

effect  of  the  Renaissance  flourished  for 
some  time  in  the  magnificence  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan drama.  It  finally  succumbed  before 
the  courtly,  artificial  style  which  was  promi- 
nent in  the  work  of  the  early  Italians,  and 
in  France  won  a  speedy  victory  over  the 
confused  efforts  of  Hardy,  and  even  over 
Corneille's  early  attempts  to  withstand  the 
movement  of  the  time  in  the  direction  of 
classicism,  and  away  from  the  union  of 
mediaevalism  with  classicism,  that  began  so 
well  in  England.  In  Germany,  as  is  well 
known,  the  beginning  had  been  very  prom- 
ising. Hans  Sachs  struck  a  note  which 
showed  clearly  that  the  new  influence  was 
combining  with  the  old  one,  and  it  would 
have  been  natural  to  expect  that  literature 
in  Germany  would  have  flourished,  for  a 
time  at  least,  with  an  original  fervour  as 
characteristic  as  that  of  England  and  Spain 
before  they  succumbed  .to  classicism.  Yet, 
while  those  two  countries  gained  new 
strength    from   their    augmented    material 


FROM   OPITZ   TO  LESSHTG.  15 

prosperity,  Germany  lost  hers;  and  after 
the  Thirty  Years'  "War  the  coherent  Hfe 
of  the  country,  already  in  decay,  was 
destroyed.  The  shattered  relations  of  the 
])ast  could  no  more  be  resumed  than  a 
Shakespearian  play  can  be  written  to-day 
in  Boston,  or  than  roses  can  bloom  in 
snow  and  ice.  The  new  tendency  of 
civihzation  had  begun  the  work  of  ruin, 
and  the  war  completed  the  task. 

Let  us  see  if  we  may  not  find  out  some 
of  the  reasons  for  this  momentous  change, 
and  our  task  will  be  the  more  inter- 
esting if  we  bear  in  mind  that  it  was  one 
which  afiected  English  literature  as  well 
as  the  German;  though,  for  reasons  to  be 
pointed  out,  not  to  the  same  extent.  It 
was  a  universal  modification  of  enthusiasm 
in  the  direction  of  formal  correctness.  The 
sole  model  was  Latin  literature,  and  it  is 
only  apparent  on  examination  how  much 
the  work  of  the  old  Roman  writers  has 
become  an  inspiration   to  modern  civiliza- 


16  FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSTNG. 

tion.  In  spite  of  the  most  ardent  efforts 
to  extirpate  mediaevalism,  its  historic  posi- 
tion could  not  be  destroyed,  although  it 
was  much  modified.  Yet  the  natural 
consequence  of  copying  the  literature  of 
another  race, —  written,  too,  in  a  language 
that  was  swiftly  becoming  a  dead  one, — 
was  this:  that  literature  fell  entirely  into 
the  hands  of  the  learned,  and  became  an 
aristocratic  possession.  And  herein,  too,  it 
followed  one  of  the  strongest  movements 
of  the  time;  indeed,  it  is  fairer  to  say  they 
were  both  expressions  of  one  thing, —  the 
predominance  of  aristocracy  in  every 
department  of  thought,  in  government  as 
in  odes,  in  the  church  as  in  education. 

Let  us  bear  in  mind  that,  two  centuries 
ago,  not  only  was  the  work  of  the  ancients 
the  most  admired  model  that  the  world 
knew,  but  that  there  was  then  only  begin- 
ning the  momentous  change  —  by  no 
means  even  now  wholly  accomplished  — 
which  has   modified   the  intellectual    pro- 


FEOM   OPITZ    TO    LESSLN^G.  17 

cesses  of  men  as  completely  as  steam  has: 
modified  their  material  condition.  Just  as 
until  within  about  half  a  century  all  travel- 
ling was  done  by  sail  or  with  the  aid  of 
liorses,  —  in  the  time  of  Solomon  and  of 
the  Romans,  as  during  our  Revolutionary 
War,  —  so,  until  the  diffusion  of  the  Coper- 
nican  system,  men  regarded  their  position 
in  the  universe  as  the  central  one;  the  sun, 
moon,  and  stars  were  thought  to  have 
been  created  for  their  sole  good;  and  it 
also  remained  one  of  the  accepted  common- 
places of  belief  that  men  were  the  degen- 
erate descendants  of  a  more  glorious  race 
of  the  past.  Modern  science  has  shown 
the  inaccuracy  of  this  notion,  and  by  so 
doing  has  weakened  our  dependence  on 
classical  literature.  Weakened,  I  say,  not 
destroyed,  for  we  cannot  understand  the 
work  of  our  ancestors  without  understand- 
ing what  it  was  that  they  felt  and  en- 
deavored to  convey,  and  how  it  was 
that  they  thought  and  wrote  as  they  did. 


18  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

But  this  historical  interest,  important 
though  it  be,  is  very  different  from 
dependence  on  the  classics  as  the  sole 
repository  of  profane  learning,  which  was 
one  important  result  of  the  Renaissance. 
The  value  of  native  literature  is  something 
that  has  only  recently  been  learned,  and  it 
will  be  interesting  to  watch  the  steps  by 
which  this  was  done  in  Germany.  After 
the  Thirty  Years'  War,  literature  lan- 
guished. The  natural  growth  of  the  Re- 
naissance had  already  begun  to  fail  under 
the  theological  controversies  that  preceded 
that  terrible  tragedy.  One  of  the  most 
important  of  the  efforts  to  atone  for  ab- 
sence of  inspiration  by  zealous  work  Avas 
the  foundation  of  the  Fruit-bearing  Society 
in  1617,  which  was  established  for  the 
purpose  of  encouraging  literature.  The 
inspiring  model  of  this,  and  the  similar 
societies  that  followed  it,  was  the  Italian 
Academies.  The  French  Academy,  which 
w^as   founded   in    1629,  was    another  proof 


fjrom  opitz  to  lessing.  19 

of  the  existence  of  similar  needs  in  that 
country.  Both  the  Academy  and  its  hum- 
ble rival,  the  Fruit-bearing  Society,  were 
intended  as  literary  tribunals,  which  should 
find  a  way  out  of  the  confusion  that  dark- 
ened intellectual  progress.  The  German 
society  was  composed  of  seven  hundred 
and  fifty  members,  among  whom  were  au- 
thors, grammarians,  philologists,  rhetori- 
cians, and  a  host  of  non-producers  who 
were  interested  in  literature.  These  were 
almost  entirely  people  of  gentle  birth.  The 
members  were  busily  employed,  according 
to  their  light,  in  polishing  the  language 
and  introducing  those  graces  of  expression 
and  manners  which  we  shall  soon  see  out- 
wardly prominent  in  most  of  the  modern 
nations.  The  war,  however,  interfered 
with  this  society;  yet  more  fatal  to  it  was 
the  remoteness  of  its  interests  from  the 
national  life.  While  with  one  hand  it 
turned  towards  the  brilliant  literatures  of 
Italy  and  France  and  began  to  translate 


20  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

the  works  that  had  won  fame  there,  it 
also  kept  on  good  terms  with  mediseval- 
ism,  as  was  shown  by  JS^eumark's  assertion 
that  Japhet's  grandson  had  settled  in  As- 
cania,  —  i.  e.,  the  Duchy  of  Anhalt, —  and 
that  among  his  direct  descendants  were 
Manus,  the  first  King  of  Grermany,  a  con- 
temporary of  Abraham/  and  the  founder 
of  Trier;  Servus,  King  of  the  Suabians, 
etc.,  a  genealogy  which  was  demanded 
by  the  alleged  descent  of  the  French  from 
Francus,  the  son  of  Hector,  and  of  the 
Britains  from  Brutus,  a  grandson  of 
^neas.^  It  will  be  observed  that  the 
Germans  made  up  for  their  late  arrival  in 
this  fabulous  antiquity  by  going  back  to  a 
remoter  origin   than   other   nations.     Mat- 

1  Yet  even  in  the  new  edition  of  the  "  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica,"  we  read  that  "the  Chinese  Shoo-King"  (the 
Cook  of  History)  "  takes  us  back  to  about  tlie  time  of 
Noah."  —  Sue  vol.  v.,  p.  660. 

2  For  further  mention  of  these  genealogies  see  the  very 
intex-esting  book  of  Ai'turo  Graf,  "  Roma  nella  memoria 
e  nelle  Immaginazione  del  Medio  Evo."  Turin,  1883: 
i.  28,  and  note  p.  53. 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSIN^G.  21 

ters  of  orthography  and  spelling  were  de- 
bated with  much  fervour.  In  general, 
however,  literature  derived  but  little  profit 
from  these  well-meant  endeavors  to  adapt 
the  country  to  the  new  light  that  was 
rising.  The  lamentable  divisions  of  the 
country  stood  in  the  way  of  the  formation 
of  any  general  enthusiasm,  and  each  petty 
principality  was  an  intrenched  camp  where 
lurked  prejudice  and  ignorance. 

When  we  learn  that  among  the  questions 
discussed  by  the  members  of  the  society 
was  whether  the  Germans  had  any  share  in 
building  the  Tower  of  Babel,  and  whether 
the  German  language  was  spoken  at  Greece 
and  Rome,  we  are  reminded  of  the  subjects 
given  out  by  the  French  Academy  for  dis- 
cussion just  before  the  Revolution :  "  How 
often  was  the  Temple  of  Janus  closed  ? " 
"  What  were  the  attributes  of  Jupiter  Am- 
mon?"  etc.,  and  we  begin  to  doubt  the 
efficiency  of  academies  in  conveying  en- 
lightenment.   Certainly  the  German  society 


22  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

scarcely  verified  its  name.  Its  rivals  were 
scarcely  more  fortunate.  Some  of  them 
repi'esented  a  violent  reaction  against 
French  influence,  but  the  subtler  conse- 
quences of  the  new  spirit  manifested  itself 
even  in  them.  They  sought  to  remove  all 
GalHcisms  from  their  language,  but  they 
could  not  keep  from  falling  into  line  with 
the  more  important  part  of  the  movement, 
which  represented  to  them,  as  to  everyone, 
the  advance  of  modern  thought.  It  is 
sufficiently  clear  that  they  moved  further 
and  further  away  from  any  connection  Avith 
popular  literature,  and  herein  they  followed 
in  the  same  direction  with  what  was  done 
in  all  the  other  countries  of  Europe.  Yet 
nowhere  was  the  discord  more  marked  than 
in  Germany.  The  explanation  is  in  part 
that  remote  and  foreign  ideals  were  chosen 
from  antiquity,  but  we  must  also  remember 
that  the  schism  was  not  caused  by  this  fact 
alone.  While  the  upper  classes  rose  in  edu- 
cation and  what  was  in  many  ways  refine- 


FEOM   OPITZ   TO   LESSEN^G.  23 

ment,  the  lower  classes  sank  from  the  level 
of  ease  which  they  had  enjoyed  during  the 
middle  ages.  They  lost  power,  which  was 
speedily  grasped  by  the  aristocracy.  This 
was  true  throughout  Europe,  but  nowhere 
was  it  truer  than  in  Germany,  where  relig- 
ious discussions  and  civil  war  had  done 
their  worst,  and  where  arrogance  on  one 
side  was  met  by  servility  on  the  other. 
The  political  history  explains  the  literary, 
just  as  literature  always  illustrates  the  poli- 
tical, history  of  a  country. 

What,  then,  the  societies  which  I  have 
briefly  mentioned  actually  accomplished, 
was  slight.  Altogether  they  did  less  than 
a  single  writer,  Opitz,  who  was  himself  , 
a  member  of  the  Fruit-bearing  Society. 
They  served  to  foster  a  general  uniformity 
of  taste ;  but  the  law,  so  to  speak,  was  first 
laid  down  by  Opitz.  It  was  not  a  new  law 
by  any  manner  of  means.  Few  laws  are, 
for  that  matter.  They  are  but  the  conden- 
sation of  a  widespread  feeling,  the  statement 


24  PROM    OPITZ    TO    LESSING. 

of  a  general  desire.  The  modifications  that 
Opitz  helped  to  introduce  into  Germany 
were  generally  described  as  resulting  from 
French  influence,  and  their  sway  in  Ger- 
many was  doubtless  much  furthered  by  the 
predominance  of  French  taste  in  this  coun- 
try as  elsewhere,  though  this  was  more 
marked  in  Germany  than  anywhere.  Yet, 
although  the  same  tendency  manifested 
itself  first  with  great  distinctness,  and  was 
followed  in  England  by  Ben  Jonson,  with- 
out knowledge  of  what  was  done  in  France, 
the  French  acquired  the  completest  mastery 
of  it,  and  gave  it  their  name  by  right  of 
conquest,  because  they  adapted  and  applied 
it  most  successfully.  It  harmonized,  too, 
with  the  political  system  of  which  Louis 
XIV.  was  the  most  eminent  exponent,  un- 
der whose  hands  France  became  a  grand 
and  powerful  country,  while  the  German 
imitations  were  ludicrous  miniatures  of  its 
splendor,  just  as  their  so-called  Gallic  lit- 
erature was  a  mere  confused  echo  of  the 
great  French  classic  literature. 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  Z5 

Opitz's  Buch  von  der  deutsclien  Poeterei 
was  written  and  published  in  1624.  There 
is  much  in  it  that  has  a  remote  sound  to  our 
ears,  but  it  had  at  the  time  all  the  charm 
of  eternal  truth.  Here  are  some  of  its 
precepts :  — 

"Heroic  verse  excludes  what  is  not  suitable,  and 
brings  in  much  that  does  belong  there,  but  is  new 
and  unexpected,  introducing  all  sorts  of  fables,  his- 
tories, arts  of  war,  slaughters,  councils,  stonns  of 
wind,  rain,  and  thunder,  and  whatever  necessarily 
awakens  our  awe ;  and  everything  in  such  order  as  if 
one  thing  followed  the  other  and  came  unsought  into 
the  book." 

"  Tragedy  is  suited  for  the  majesty  of  heroic  verse, 
except  that  it  seldom  permits  the  introduction  of 
people  of  humble  birth  or  common  deeds,  because  it 
concerns  itself  with  one  of  royal  lineage,  murders, 
despairs,  slaughters  of  fathers  and  children,  fires,  incest, 
wars  and  tumults,  lamentations,  outcries,  sighs,  and 
such  tilings." 

"  Comedy  has  to  do  with  common  matters  and  per- 
sons: it  treats  of  weddings,  banquets,  games,  the 
deceits  and  knaveries  of  servingmen,  braggart  foot- 
soldiere,  love-matters,  the  frivolity  of  youth,  the  avarice 
of  the  aged,  low  amours,  and  such  things  which  are 
daily  occurrence  among  common  people.  Hence  those 
who   have  nowadays  written  comedies  have  greatly 


26  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

erred,  in  that  they  have  brought  into  them  emperors 
and  potentates,  thereby  running  full  in  the  face  of  the 
laws  of  comedy." 

"Eclogues  or  pastoral  songs  have  to  do  with  sheep, 
goats,  seagoing,  harvests,  fruits,  fishing,  and  other  out- 
door things;  and  whatever  the  subject,  —  as  love, 
marriages,  deaths,  courtships,  banqueting,  etc., — it  is 
treated  in  a  rustic  and  simple  manner." 

"In  elegies  one  finds  first  only  sad  things,  but, 
afterwards,  love  matters,  complaints  about  one's  mis- 
tress, longing  for  death,  letters,  yearnings  for  the 
absent,  narrations  of  one's  life,"  etc. 

This  congeries  of  definitions  and  precepts 
was  taken  for  the  most  part  from  the 
"Poetices"  of  J.  0.  Scaliger  (1561),  a  book 
that  first  froze  into  solid  shape  the  mass  of 
pedantry  that  had  grown  up  from  the  read- 
ing of  the  classics.  In  accordance  with  his 
principles,  Opitz  at  once  set  himself  to  the 
work  of  translating  abundantly  the  master- 
pieces of  modern  and  ancient  literature  into 
German,  a  task  which  occupied  all  his  con- 
temporaries throughout  Europe;  and  his 
real  intellectual  contemporaries,  it  is  to  be 
remembered,  were  the  Pleiad  among  the 
French,  and  the  early  Elizabethans  among 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSEN^G.  27 

the  English.  Thus  he  translated  a  play  of 
Seneca's  and  the  "Antigone"  of  Sophocles, 
a  task  which  was  part  of  the  literary  educa- 
tion of  every  country  of  Europe,  as  truly 
as  it  is  part  of  the  discipline  of  every  well- 
educated  young  man.  Thus,  Dolce  and 
others  in  Italy,  the  elder  Baif  in  France,  and 
Gascoigne  in  England,  to  give  but  a  few 
names,  all  began  in  the  same  way.  Like 
Surrey,  Opitz  translated  from  the  Italians, 
like  Spenser,  from  the  work  of  the  French 
Pleiad;  then  he  made  use  of  the  work  of 
the  Dutch  writers,  and  notably  of  Heinsius, 
to  say  nothing  of  abundant  versions  of 
Greek,  Latin,  French,  and  Spanish  writers. 
He  put  into  German  Barclay's  "  Argenis  " 
and  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  "  Arcadia."  It  was 
with  these  crutches  that  his  best  work 
was  done.  As  an  original  writer  he  accom- 
plished but  little,  —  in  this  respect  he  may 
be  compared  with  Malherbe,  —  but  his 
influence  was  enormous.  Other  writers, 
and  notably  Paul  Fleming,  were  endowed 


28  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

with  greater  poetical  genius;  but  none  of 
them  said  just  what  their  contemporaries 
wanted  to  hear  so  infallibly  as  did  Opitz, 
and  hence  his  position  was  secure. 

While  under  Opitz's  directions,  Germany 
took  that  step  in  her  literary  progress  which 
was  made  by  every  country  in  Europe,  and 
the  new  formal  knowledge  of  the  classics 
became  the  main  foundation,  instead  of 
being  one  of  many  elements,  of  literature. 
There  were  other  modifications,  here  as  else- 
where, which  it  is  proper  for  us  to  observe 
distinctly.  The  new  interest  in  the  classics 
was  the  main  change,  the  others  are  dis- 
tinctly secondary  varieties  of  this  one  great 
substitution  of  the  history,  mythology, 
manner  of  thought  of  Rome,  and  of  Greece 
as  seen  by  the  Romans,  in  the  place  of  the 
natural  past  of  each  nation.  In  everything 
done  in  art  and  literature  for  two  centuries, 
we  perceive  a  new  background.  The  old 
ideals  are  wiped  out  and  scraps  of  classical 
antiquity  are  brought  in  to  take  their  place. 


FROM   OPITZ    TO    LESSING.  29 

To  be  sure,  throughout  the  middle  ages, 
Roman  literature  had  served  this  purpose, 
but  now  it  was  burnished  anew  and  had  its 
missing  limbs  restored.  Moreover,  it  held 
alone  the  position  that  it  had  previously 
shared — as  in  Chaucer's  Canterbury  Tales 
—  with  purely  medisBval  legends.  When 
Opitz  said  that  it  was  of  the  highest  impor- 
tance to  make  a  proper  selection  of  epithets, 
of  which  previously  there  had  been  a  great 
lack,  and  that  they  were  to  be  gathered 
especially  from  Greek  and  Latin,  he  foretold 
the  course  which  writers  were  to  follow  for 
a  long  time.  When  he  illustrated  his  mean- 
ing by  examples  taken  from  Latin  writers, 
he  used  the  only  models  that  were  authori- 
tative. When  he  advised  the  employment 
of  full  and  forcible  phrases  in  speaking  of 
important  subjects,  as  gods,  heroes,  princes, 
cities,  etc.,  and  that  these  should  not  be 
simply  named  but  described  with  high  and 
splendid  language,  citing  Yergil's  method 
as  an  example;  —  when  he  did  this,  I  say, 


30  FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

he  won  the  glory  which  falls  to  that  rare 
man  who  gives  advice  that  is  followed. 
Possibly  this  is  not  always  the  best  advice; 
but,  however  this  may  be,  we  must  remem- 
ber that  it  is  not  Opitz  who  spoke;  he  was 
but  the  mouthpiece  of  the  new  spirit.  The 
authority  of  the  classics,  which  was  thus 
asserting  itself,  was  simply  the  authority  of 
the  best  that  men  had  uttered  on  the 
problems  of  life  and,  what  is  perhaps  the 
most  important,  of  the  best  way  of  uttering 
it;  for  it  was  a  rhetorical  change  almost  as 
much  as  anything  else. 


CHAPTER  II. 

In  studying  the  pseudo- classicism  we 
notice  three  distinct  steps  that  it  took, — 
three  currents  of  the  movements  of  the 
Renaissance.  The  first  in  time  was  that 
which  we  have  just  seen  in  our  brief  ex- 
amination of  Opitz;  and  Opitz  personifies 
the  whole  movement  in  German  literature, 
for  it  is  always  convenient,  in  dealing  with 
the  past,  to  condense  a  great  deal  into  one 
proper  name.  Thus,  Leonidas  stands  for 
the  Greek  resistance  to  Persia;  Washing- 
ton, for  the  whole  course  of  our  revolu- 
tionary war;  Pope,  for  the  classical  wave  in 
English  literature.  The  second  one,  which 
also  took  its  I'ise  in  Italy,  was  a  form  of 
writing  of  which  elegance  and  conceits 
were  the  most  admired  constituents.  It 
was  a  refinement  of  the  rugged  virtues  of 

31 


32  FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

the  school  of  Trissino  and  Rucellai  in  Italy ; 
of  that  of  Ronsard,  even  Malherbe,  and 
the  earlier  Jodelle  in  France,  and  of  Ben 
Jonson  in  England.  In  England  it  formed 
what  we  know  as  the  metaphysical  school 
of  poetry.  The  third  was  the  French  clas- 
sicism which  began  in  England  with  Dry- 
den  and  flourished  under  Pope,  and  per- 
vaded Germany  under  the  hands  of  Canitz 
and  Gottsched.  It  is  the  second  one  that 
we  have  now  to  examine;  and  while  it  is 
part  of  the  advantage  to  be  got  from 
studying  a  foreign  literature,  that  it  throws 
light  upon  our  own,  our  own  in  its  turn 
also  throws  light  upon  that  of  its  neigh- 
bors. Hence  it  is  quite  possible  for  us 
to  follow  the  further  vagaries  of  German 
literature  by  studying  the  corresponding 
excuses  in  the  English  poets.  What  we 
shall  notice  will  be  a  similar  loosening  of 
the  hold  upon  simplicity,  and  the  search 
for  exaggerated  refinement  in  both.  This 
is  soon  conspicuous  in  the  works  of  Klaj 


FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  33 

(1616-1656)  and  of  Harsdorffer  (1607- 
1658),  for  the  German  side,  who  may  be 
compared  with  some  of  their  English  con- 
temporaries; and,  indeed,  the  simultaneous 
study  of  what  was  done  in  the  two  coun- 
tries will  be  of  service  in  showing  how 
inevitable  are  what  every  writer  takes  to 
be  his  best  claims  to  originality.  We  hum- 
bler people  might  as  well  be  proud  of  the 
fact  that  we  shiver  when  we  are  cold,  or 
put  on  airs  of  superiority  because  we 
strictly  follow  fashion  in  dress. 

Let  us,  in  the  first  place,  notice  that  the 
delicate  observation  of  the  beauty  of  flow- 
ers, trees,  and  gardens  is  common  to  the 
corresponding  poets  in  the  two  languages. 
In  his  "  Blumenlied  "  Harsdorffer  sings:  — 

Die  Bltiraelein  sind  ohne  Zahl, 

und  gcben  una  die  freye  Wahl, 

die  schonsten  auszulesen. 

Von  Ost  und  "Westen  schaut  man  hier 

die  wunder  seltne  Blumen-zier, 

BO  jernals  sind  gewesen. 

Der  Safft,  hat  KrafEt 


34  PKOM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

und  das  Leben,  eingegeben, 

der  sie  mahlet, 

ja  mit  Purpur-Blut  bestralet. 

Es  bleibet  bey  der  Blumen  nicht, 

die  Baumen  bringen  ihr  Gericht, 

die  Pfirsing  und  Marilen  : 

Die  Weichsel,  Feigen,  und  Granat 

und  was  man  in  der  Fremde,  hat, 

kan  man  hierura  erzielen 

Citron,  Melon,  etc. 

Observe,  too,  "  Das  Yogelsang  "  :  —    - 

Nachtigal  ftihre  der  Vogelein  Reyen  ! 
Tone,  wann  andre  freyen  in  Maien, 
Lispele,  wispel  Reuter  zum  Pferd, 
klage  mit  schlagen,  mache  dich  wehrt ! 
Lasse  das  zarte  Stimmelein  steigen 
Orgel  und  Pfeiffen,  Lauteu  und  Geigen, 
miissen  versturamend  gegen  dir  schweigen. 

Read,  too,  Philipp  von  Zesen's  "An  seine 
Gedanken  bei  herzunahendem  Friihlinge," 
as  well  as  numberless  other  poems  of  the 
time,  and  there  is  to  be  found,  in  colder 
language,  the  same  innocent  delight  in 
nature  that  is  conspicuous  in  Herrick 
(1591-1674?),  and  Marvell  (1620-1678),  to 
mention  the  most  conspicuous.    Indeed,  the 


FROM   OPITZ    TO  LESSIN^G.  35 

more  we  examine,  the  more  striking  be- 
comes the  likeness;  we  seem  to  be  reading 
duller  Herricks,  and  Marvells,  and  Carews, 
and  Herberts.  What  shall  we  examine 
first?  The  mere  form  of  the  poems?  We 
may  recall,  to  take  the  most  singular  ex- 
amples, Herbert's  poems,  "The  Altar,"  in 
which  the  lines,  by  being  longer  at  the 
beginning  and  at  the  end,  with  all  the 
intervening  ones  of  uniformly  smaller  size, 
give  to  the  eye  a  crude  representation  of 
an  altar;  his  "Easter  Wings,"  in  which  we 
notice  a  similar  process  of  imitation;  and 
Herrick's  "Pillar  of  Fame."  This  ingenious 
device,  which  was  known  in  Greece,  prac- 
tised in  the  East,  and  was  a  favorite  form 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  found  many  admirers 
in  Germany  at  about  the  same  time.  Sim- 
ilarly constructed  poems  still  survive,  it  is 
curious  to  notice,  in  valentines,  a  form  of 
composition  in  which  one  is  safe  in  not 
expecting  originality.  In  these  conven- 
tional  productions  we  find,  as  we   should 


36  FROM  OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

expect,  relics  of  a  distant  past.  Not  every 
one  writes  valentines  every  year,  and  those 
who  do,  adopt  a  form  that  has,  at  the  most, 
one  three  hundred  and  sixty-fifth  as  much 
wear  as  the  more  usual  forms  of  correspon- 
dence. Hence,  methods  are  preserved  that 
attrition  has  rendered  obsolete  elsewhere. 
Indeed,  the  very  gew-gaws  of  the  paper  on 
which  valentines  are  printed  have  kept 
alive  old  forms  of  decoration  contemporary 
with  the  lyric  inspiration  that  endears  them 
to  the  receiver,  just  as  the  oldest  fashions 
are  preserved  in  court  and  ecclesiastical 
dresses,  —  especially  of  higher  dignitaries, 
—  and  in  the  unfrequent  ceremony  of 
coronation.  In  time,  perhaps,  it  may  be 
possible  to  make  a  chronological  table  of 
these  curious  survivals,  of  cross-bows  as 
well  as  valentines,  and  to  estimate  the  date 
when  they  flourished  by  the  age  of  those 
who  now  make  use  of  them. 

Harsdorffer    composed    an    "Abbildung 
des  Reichsapfels"  and  an  "Abbildung  des 


FROM  OPITZ   TO  LESSIN^G.  37 

zweispitzigen  Parnassus."  *  Another  cu- 
rious form  is  exemplified  in  Herrick's 
"Upon  Love,  by  way  of  Question  and 
Answer : "  — 

I  bring  ye  love  ?    Quest. —  What  will  love  do  ? 

Ans. —  Like,  and  dislike  ye. 
I  bring  ye  love.     Quest. —  What  will  love  do? 

Ans. —  Stroke  ye,  to  strike  yc. 
I  bring  ye  love.    Quest. —  What  will  love  do  ? 

Ans. —  Love  will  befool  ye,  etc. 

With  this  curious  form,  which  is  doubt- 
less an  inheritance  from  the  Middle  Ages, 
we  may  compare  Hellwig's  "Wechselge- 
sang : "  — 

Helianthus — Es  klappern,   und  plappern,  und   pap- 
pern, 
Montana  —  in  Nesten  die  Storche. 
Es  tirililiret,  tiliret,  umschwtlret, 
Hd. —  in  Lflften  die  Lerche. 
Es  kittert,  und  flittert,  sich  wittert, 
Mont. —  der  Stiglitz  bey  Tag. 

Es  zwitzert,  und  witzert,  und  zizert 
JSel.  —  das  Zeisslein  in  Haag. 

1  The  student  will  recall  many  further  illustrations  of 
what  is  but  mentioned  here, —  e.g.,  the  prefatory  lines  to 
Sylvester's  "Da  Bartas,"  and  Schottelius's  "Pocal  von 
Dactilischen  und  Anapestischen." 


1122  9 1 


38  FROM  OPITZ  TO   LESSING. 

Herrick's  "Aphorisms"  and  Logau's 
"  Sinngedichte "  correspond  equally.  As 
for  the  more  intimate  similarities  of  thought, 
the  resemblances  are  even  more  striking. 
Scheffler's  poem  comparing  Jesulein  to  a 
Blumelein, — 

Ich  weiss  eki  liebes  Blttmelein 

Mit  Gottes  Thau  begossen, 

In  einem  jungfraulichen  Schrein 

Zur  Winters-zeit  entsprossen : 

Diss  Bliimelein  heisst  Jesulein, 

Ew'ger  Jugend,  grosser  Tugend, 

Schon  und  lieblich,  reich  und  herrlich : 

Mensclien-kind, 

Wie  selig  ist,  der  dieses  Bltlmelein  findt. 

is  a  good  example  of  what  in  England 
expressed  itself  in  poems  like  Herbert's 
'^  Jesu,"  where  we  find  the  same  quality  of 
conceit,  although  in  another  guise  than 
here.  The  spirit  that  animates  the  "  Vani- 
tas  I  Vanitatum  Vanitas !  "  of  Gryphius  is 
the  same  that  we  find  in  Herbert's  "  Home :  " 

Nothing  but  drought  and  dearth,  but  bush  and  brake, 
Which  way  so  e'er  I  look,  I  see ; 


FKOM   OPITZ   TO  LESSING.  39 

Some  may  dream  merrily,  but  when  they  wake, 
They  dress  themselves,  and  come  to  Thee. 

We  talk  of  harvests  —  there  are  no  such  things 
But  when  we  leave  our  com  and  hay ; 

There  is  no  fruitful  yeare  but  that  which  brings 
The  last  and  lov'd,  though  dreadful  day. 

When  we  come  to  Hofmtin  von  Hof- 
manswaldau  (1G18-1G79)  we  reach  a  man 
who  gave  extreme  expression  to  those  va- 
garies that  are  conspicuous  in  what  are 
called  the  metaphysical  poets  of  England, 
from  Donne  to  Cowley.  But,  before  we 
take  up  these  grotesque  excesses,  we  may 
note  how  in  the  lines  "  An  Doris  "  he  uses 
the  same  similes  and  preaches  the  same 
lesson  that  we  find  in  Ben  Jonson,  "  Gather 
ye  rose-buds  while  ye  may,"  in  Herrick, 
and  in  Waller's  ^  Go,  lovely  rose  " :  — 

Was  wilt  du,  Doris,  machen  ? 
Brich  deinen  stolzen  geist ! 
Diss,  was  du  schonheit  heist, 
Sind  blumen-gleiche  sachen, 
Die  unbestandig  sind, 
Und  fliehen  wie  der  wind. 


40  PROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

Es  wird  auf  deinen  wangen 
Nicht  steter  fi-iihling  seyn ; 
Es  weicht  der  sternen  schein, 
Als  wie  der  blumen  prangen. 
Die  Zeit,  so  alles  bricht 
Schont  auch  des  leibes  nicht. 

Was  ist  der  schonheit  glantzen, 
Als  ein  gesch winder  Blitz? 
Sein  zubereiter  sitz 
Bestelit  in  engen  gi'antzen. 
Kein  fluss  verrauscht  so  bald, 
Als  schonheit  und  gestalt. 

Was  heute  purpiir  traget, 
TJnd  alabaster  fuhrt, 
Was  sich  mit  rosen  ziert, 
Wird  morgen  hingeleget, 
Und  ruhet  ungeacht 
In  seiner  todes-nacht. 

Nun,  Doris,  lerne  kennen, 
Was  falscher  hochmuth  sey, 
Bleib  nicht  alleine  frey. 
Lass  deine  jugend  brennen, 
Und  lass  der  liebe  glut, 
Durchwandern  hertz  und  blut. 

Gebrauche  deine  schatze 
Weil  blut  und  bltite  siegt; 
Wann  dich  die  Zeit  beti-flgt 
So  trennet  auch  das  netze. 
So  vormahls  um  dich  hieng 
Und  manche  seele  fieng. 


FROM    OPITZ    TO  LESSING.  41 

So  du  dich  selbst  kanst  lieben, 
So  nimm  die  Warnung  an, 
Die  ich  dir  itzt  gethan : 
Ich  werde  mich  betrilben, 
So  diese  rose  stirbt 
Und  ohne  lust  verdirbt." 

Certainly  it  is  easy  to  see,  from  the  suc- 
cessful poems  of  this  period,  what  it  was 
that  their  writers  tried  to  express,  and  this 
is  something  that  in  English  at  least  has 
made  the  time  memorable  for  graceful  and 
charming  work.  It  is  not  surprising,  when 
we  recall  the  political  and  social  condition 
of  Germany,  that  the  poets  accomplished 
less  there,  yet  they  did  much  that  was  cer- 
tainly noteworthy,  although  they  are  best 
known  for  some  of  the  extravagances  which 
were  inherent  in  their  zeal  for  curious  con- 
ceits. For  every  literary  method,  however 
excellent,  carries  within  it  the  seeds  of  de- 
cay. Absolute  perfection  cannot  be  found; 
good  taste  means  simply  that  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  bad  taste;  eloquence  implies  the 
existence   of  bombast,  just   as   we   should 


42  FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

call  nothing  tall  if  there  were  not  shorter 
things  with  which  comparison  is  made. 
The  boldness  of  the  Elizabethan  drama 
soon  degenerated  into  a  hollow  imitation  of 
grandeur;  the  correctness  of  the  school 
of  Pope  into  an  arid,  juiceless  precision; 
and  perhaps  in  our  own  day  we  are  occa- 
sionally thrilled  by  ingenuities  of  rhetoric 
which  we  mistake  for  poetical  wonders. 
The  fault  is,  however,  more  obvious  in  the 
past,  after  it  has  been  definitely  determined 
by  universal  agreement;  and  it  is  nowhere 
more  conspicuous  than  in  the  inferior  work 
of  this  school  of  poets.  In  their  hunt  for 
what  was  striking,  they  found  much  that 
was  trivial.  Cowley  and  Donne,  and  in- 
deed Herbert,  furnish  many  examples  of 
this  tendencv.  ISTo  one  showed  it  more 
markedly  than  did  Hofman  von  Hofmans- 
waldau.     Here  is  a  gem  in  proof ;  — 

ABRISS  EINES  FALSCHET^  FREUNDES. 
Was  ist  doch  ingemein  ein  Freund  in  dieser  welt  ? 
Ein    Spiegel    der    vergrosst  und    falschlich    schoner 
macliet, 


FROM    OPITZ    TO    LESSING.  43 

Ein  Pfennig  der  nicht  Strich  und  nicht  Gewichte 
halt; 
Ein  Wosen,  so  aus  Zorn  und  bittrer  Galle  lachet, 
Ein  Strauclistein,  dessen  Glantz  uns  Schand'  und 
Schaden  bringt; 
Ein  Glas,  an  Tituln  gut,  und  doch  mit  Gifft  erfUllet, 
Ein  Dolch,  der  schreckend  ist,  und  uns  in  Hertzen 
dringt,  — 
Ein   Ileilbrunn    (wie  er  heisst),   aus  dem  Verderben 
quillet, 
Ein  goldgestickter  Strang,  der  uns  die  Gurgel  bricht ; 
Ein  Freund,  der  ohngefehr  das  Hertze  hat  verlohren, 
Ein  Ilonigwurm,  der  stets  mit  siissem  Stachel  sticht ; 
Ein  weisscs  Ilennenoy,  das  Drachen  hat  gebohren, 
Ein  falscher  Crocodil,  der  weinend  uns  zerreist ; 
Ein  recht  Sirenen-Weib,  das  singend  uns  ertrancket, 
Ein  Safft,  der  lieblich  reucht,  und  doch  die  Haut 
durchbeist, 
Ein  Mann,   der  uns  umhalst,   wcnn  seine  Hand  uns 
hencket, 
Ein  Gilftbaun  voller  Bluth,  ein  Moloch  Musicant ; 
Ein  ilbergoldte  Perl,  ein  Lock-ass  zu  den  Nothen, 

Ein  Apfcl  von  Damasc,  ein  falscher  Diamant ; 
Ein  iiberzuckcrt  Gifft,  ein  Irrlicht,  uns  zu  todten, 

Ein  Pfeiffer  in  das  Zarn,  ein  Spotter  unser  Pein ; 
Ein  goldncr  Urtels-Tisch  und  cine  faule  StUtze, 

Ein  Zeug,   der  bald    verschleist,  ein  ungregtlndter 
Schcin, 
Dem  Teuffel  allzusehr,  dem  Menschen  wenig  ntitze. 

Ein  mohres  lasst  mir  jetzt  die  Ungedult  nicht  zu ; 
Mein  Leser,  fleuch  den  Krahm  von  solchen  falschen 
WiUiren, 


44  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

Was  diesen  Eifer-Reim  erprest,  daa  meide  du ; 
Ach,  hatt'  ich,  was  ich  schrieb,  nicht   auch  zugleich 
erf  ahren ! 

Lohenstein  (1635-1683),  who  wrote  tra- 
gedies that  outdo  in  horrors  what  his 
contemporary  accompUshed  in  conceits,  is 
another  example  of  the  same  school. 
Andreas  Gryphius  also  wrote  tragedies,  but 
under  the  soothing  and  chastening  influence 
of  Vondel,  the  Dutch  tragedian. 

What  we  notice  first,  on  thinking  over 
the  work  of  such  writers,  is  the  inevitable- 
ness  of  a  change,  and  the  change  soon 
came ;  it  appeared  about  simultaneously  in 
England  and  Germany;  and  here  it  was 
that  what  is  properly  called  French  influ- 
ence first  asserted  itself.  It  also  took 
another  and  strictly  national  form  in  the 
hands  of  Christian  Weise  and  others,  but 
the  main  direction  lay  in  obedience  to 
French  taste. 

Canitz  (1654-1699)  was  among  the  first 
to   write   in   this  new  fashion.     He  began 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  45 

with  imitating  the  idols  of  his  time,  just  as 
Dryden  did  in  his  early  poems ;  but  he  soon, 
like  his  greater  English  contemporary,  gave 
in  his  allegiance  to  the  doctrine  of  Boileau. 
His  satirical  poems  are  inspired  by  the 
French  writer,  and  his  constant  aim  was  to 
use  poetry  as  an  expression  of  reason  ap- 
plied to  life.  Then,  too,  he  wrote  a  number 
of  occasional  poems,  like  Dryden's  elegies, 
which,  in  their  day,  won  great  admiration. 
Besser  and  Konig  carried  this  method  to 
ludicrous  excess.  Konig,  for  example, 
in  a  poem  called  "Heldenlob  Friedrich 
August's,"  said:  — 

Kaum  hast  du  dich  vermahlt,  so  heisst  ein  Zug  nacb 

Ehren 
Dich  nach  Italien  zum  zweiten  Male  kehren, 
Die  Welschen  raussten  da  beschamt  vor  Dir  gestehen, 
Dass  selbst  ilir  altes  Reich  dergleichen  nie  gesehen 
Und  glaubten,   weil   sie  Dich  so  hochst  vollkommen 

fanden, 
Dass  alle  Helden  Roms  in  Dir,  Held,  auferstanden. 

or,  to  borrow  from  Hettner  again,  in  his 
''August  im  Lager,"  Konig  described  the 


46  FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSIXG. 

meeting  between  the  kings  of  Poland  and 
Prussia :  — 

Der  Rltter  edlc  Schaar  vom  weissen  Adlerorden, 
Die  tiber  dreissig  stark  damals  gczahlet  wordcn,    ^ 
Sie  Avurden  hingefiihrt,  die  von  der  Kriegesart, 
Von    unserm    Feldmarschall,   dcm    tapfern   Wacker- 

barth, 
Die  aber  ihren  Dienst  dera  Hof  und  Staat  erwiesen, 
Vora  Oberkammerherrn,  dem  v/ohlgesinntcn  Friesen. 
Der  Ordcnsadler  blitzt  mit  manchcm  Demanstein, 
Ihr  Brustband  schliest  das  Wort  mit  guldnen  Strahlen 

ein  : 
Den  Glauben,  das  Geseltz,  den  Konig  zu  verfechten. 
Das  blaue  breite  Band  liangt  links  ab  zu  der  Rechten, 
Der  Anfschlag  ihres  Rocks  ist  wedcr  lang  noch  breit, 
Der  Degengurt  gestickt  als  wie  ihr  Ordenkleid. 

Canitz  avoided  these  lapses  of  taste,  but 
the  "Zeitgeist"  revenged  itself  upon  him 
in  the  edition  of  his  works  which  his  ad- 
mirer Konig  brought  out;  in  the  prefatory 
memoir  the  editor  says  that  Prussia  con- 
tends with  the  Mark  the  honor  of  being 
Canitz's  birthplace,  just  as  seven  Grecian 
cities  contended  that  Homer  was  born  in 
them.  "But,"  he  goes  on,  "while  the 
birthplace     of    the    Greek    bard    is    still 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  47 

doubtful,  the  reader  of  this  memoir  will  al- 
ready have  perceived  that  the  Freiherr 
von  Canitz,  although  he  sprang  from  the 
noble  race  of  Prussian  Canitzes,  yet  was 
not  born  in  Prussia,  or  brought  up  there, 
and,  in  the  whole  course  of  his  life,  went 
there  but  once,  in  the  campaign  of  the 
Kurfurst  Friedrich  Wilhelm.  Consequently 
Bulen  has  the  sole  claim  for  this  honor" 
(p.  97  ff.).  The  same  genial  friend  thus 
describes  Canitz's  poetry:  "His  thoughts, 
like  his  expressions,  bear  indubitable  wit- 
ness to  his  noble  education,  his  knowledge 
of  the  world,  his  associations  (Zutritt)  with 
great  people,  his  intimacy  with  the  court, 
his  familiar  intercourse  with  the  highest 
councillors  of  state,  and  his  acquaintance 
with  the  most  learned  and  intelligent  men 
of  his  time."  In  short,  he  was  a  court  poet, 
and  thus  he  could  write,  in  some  lines  on 
the  death  of  the  Kurfurstinn  Hcnriette,  the 
wife  of  him  who  was  later  Friedrich  1 :  — 
Es  konnten  Ihren  Lelb  nicht  stand  noch  Jugend  retten. 


48  FROM    OPITZ    TO    LESSING. 

Again  we  see  another  curious  instance 
of  the  all-pervadingness  of  etiquette  in 
Besser's  Ehren-Mahl  der  Frau  von  Canitz, 
in  which  the  bereaved  husband  is  told:  — 

Sag'ich  :  du  solltest  dich  besiiinen, 

Was  noch  ftir  Trost  dein  Leiden  hat, 
Das  Beyleid  dieser  gantzen  Stadt, 
tTa  zweyer  grosscn  Churfurstinnen, 

Sprichst  du  :  ein  Trost  von  solcher  Hoh 

Rechtfertige  vielmehr  dein  Weh. 

This  was  the  poem  in  which  the  writer 
found  it  impossible  to  express  to  his  own 
satisfaction  the  thought  that  the  sneer  about 
women  first  bringing  trouble  into  the  world 
was  only  true  of  their  death.  He  wrote 
to  Canitz,  who  sent  him  two  alternative 
stanzas;  but,  meanwhile,  Besser  had  hit  on 
something  that  pleased  Canitz  better  than 
either  of  them. 

In  his  satire  on  poetry  Canitz  is  very 
severe  on  the  extravagances  of  his  contem- 
poraries :  — 

Geht  wo  ein  Schul  Regent  in  cinem  FJecken  ab, 
Mein  Gott,  wie  rasen  da  die  Dichter  ura  scin  Grab ; 


FROM   OPITZ    TO    LESSING.  49 

Der  Tod  wird  ausgefilzt,  dass  er  dem  thcueron  Lebcn 
Nicht  eine  langere  Frist  als  achtzig  Jahr  gegeben  ; 

Die  Erde  wird  bewegt,  im  Himmcl  Lerm  gemacht. 

Minerva,  wenn  sic  gleich,  in  ihrem  Ilertzon  lacht, 
Auch  Phobus  und  sein  Chor,  die  miissen  wider  willen, 
Sich  traurig,  ohne  Trost,  in  Flor  und  Boy  verhullen 

Mehr  Gotter  sieht  man  offt  auf  solcem  Zettcl  stehn, 

Als  Burger  in  der  That  mit  zu  der  Leiche  gehen." 

It  is  Boileau  done  over  into  smooth  and 
readable  German.  In  the  little  Ij^rics  of 
this  school  we  find  the  same  ingenious 
smirk  that  is  to  be  found  in  the  songs  of 
Sedley,  Congreve,  etc.  A  single  example 
will  illustrate  this ;  it  is  from  Besser :  — 

Climene  starb,  und  sprach  in  Scheiden  : 

"  Nun  Lisis,  nun  verlass,  ich  dich ! 
Ish  stiirbe  willig  und  mit  Freuden, 

Liebt'  eine  dich,  so  sehr  als  ich  " 
"  Ach,"  sprach  er,  "  mag  dich  das  betrtiben  ? 

Climene,  nur  dein  Tod  ist  schwer: 
Kanst  du  mich  selbst  nicht  langer  lieben, 

Bedarf  ich  keiner  Liebe  mehr." 

There  is  no  need  of  going  through  each 
one  of  the  men  who  speedily  fell  into  line 
and  acquired  the  French  drill,  cutting  their 
verses  after  the  new  pattern,  and  expres- 


50  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSIN^G. 

sing  with  considerate  uniformity  mono- 
tonous sentiments.  The  most  striking 
exception  is  Johann  Christian  Gunther 
(1695-1723),  a  real  poet,  who  paid  dearly 
for  living  in  a  time  of  miserable  artificial- 
ity. His  career  was  one  of  vice  and  suf- 
fering. His  hand  was  against  every  man, 
and  every  man's  hand  was  against  him. 
He  uttered  the  severest  denunciations  of 
his  contemporaries,  and  not  the  conven- 
tional literary  abuse  that  was  as  artificial 
as  the  love-songs  of  the  time,  but  genuine 
heart-felt  wrath,  like  what  we  find  in  Burns. 
One  of  the  saddest  things  in  the  poor 
fellow's  career  was  this:  that  want  com- 
pelled him  to  offer  his  pen  to  patrons  who 
might  want  a  poem  turned  off  at  a  few 
hours'  notice.  Let  us  remember,  however, 
that  independence  was  then  impossible;  a 
poet  had  to  choose  between  patrons  and 
starvation.  While  the  other  bards  were 
paying  compliments  to  woman  that  were 
as  artificial  as  the  paintings  on  fans.  Gun- 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  51 

tlier  wrote  the  story  of  his  love  in  verses 
that  are  full  of  real  feeling :  — 

In  den  Waldern  will  ich  iiTen, 
Vor  den  Menschen  will  ich  fliehn, 
Mit  verwaysten  Tauben  girren, 
Mit  verscheuchten  Wilde  ziehn, 
Bis  der  Gram  mein   Leben  raube 
Bis  die  Kraffte  sich  verschreyn : 
Und  da  soil  ein  Grab  von  Laube 
Milder  als  dein  Hertze  seyn ! 

]Srotiee,  too,  the  simplicity  of  these  lines 

in  a  poem  about  his  youth :  — 

Die  Nachbarskinder  liessen  mir 

Die  Ehre,  sie  zu  lencken; 

Da  sj^ielt :  und  lacht :  und  sprungen  wir 

Auf  Rasen,  Berg :  und  Bancken. 

Was  dieser  hort  und  jener  sah, 

Das  in  der  grossen  Welt  geschah, 

Das  sucht  auch  ich  mit  vielen 

Im  kleinen  nach  zu  spielen. 

And  the  despair  of  this :  — 

Nun^  leiber  Gott,  du  bleibst  ja  lange, 
Ich  weiss  nicht,  was  ich  denken  soil. 
Der  Zweifel  macht  der  Iloffnung  bange, 
Ich  weine  Bett  und  Bibel  voll ; 
Ach,  soil  denn  ich  nur  ich  allein 
Ein  Grauel  meines  Schopfers  sein  I 


52  FllOM   OPITZ    TO    LESSING. 

Was  helfen  mich  nun  alle  Gaben  ! 

Verstand  und  Kunst  und  Ehrlichkeit ! 

O  hatt'  ich  nur  mein  Pf und  vergraben  I    . 

Es  ware  doch  wohl  eine  Zeit, 

Indem  man  aller  Orten  siehet 

Wie  hoch  der  Thoren  Glticke  bliihet. 

Die  Strafe  bessert  sonst  die  Sunder : 
Dies  ist  mehr  Grausamheit  als  Zucht  I 
Versuch'  einmal  und  geh  gelinder, 
Vielleicht  gewinnt  es  eher  Frucht : 
Ein  scharfer  Streich  und  langer  Grimni 
Macht  oft  die  besten  Herzen  schlimm. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  striking  resem- 
blance that  Gunther  bears  to  Burns;  and, 
inasmuch  as,  too  often,  comparisons  of  this 
sort  are  dangerous,  because  they  save 
thought  instead  of  encouraging  it,  it  may  be 
well  to  point  out  a  few  proofs  of  this  sim- 
ilarity. This  fii'st  strikes  us  in  the  form 
of  the  poems,  and  next  in  the  unhappiness 
of  the  lives  of  both.  Gunther  wrote  his 
lyrical  pieces  not  after  the  artificial  pat- 
tern of  his  day,  but  to  express  his  real 
emotions,  and  the  form  he  chose  was  that 
of  the  "  Yolkspoesie."     He  stands  as  one 


FKOM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  53 

of  the  two  men  of  this  period  who  were 
able  to  keep  true  to  the  traditions  of  an 
earlier  and  less  sophisticated  method.  The 
other  was  Paul  Fleming,  a  contemporary 
of  Opitz,  who  was  rewarded  with  neglect 
for  his  indifference  to  the  new  elegance 
of  modern  verse.  Gunther  felt  the  intel- 
lectual kinship,  and  wrote  about  himself:  — 

Es  dorffte  mir  ein  Freund  noch  manch  Gedachtniss 

weihn, 
Ich  wiird'  im  Tode  mehr,  als  jetzt  im  Leben,  seyn  : 
Der  stille  Rosen-Thai  ergetzte  meinen  Schatten, 
Und  lasst  sich  ihn  vielleicht  mit  Flemmings  Geiste 

gatten. 

Burns  brought  into  modern  literature  all 
the  charm  of  the  old  songs  and  ballads. 
He  did  not  invent  these,  we  must  remember; 
he  had  behind  him  many  generations  of 
verse-loving  Scotchmen;  he  was  the  final 
flower,  and  the  poet  we  are  too  apt  to  regard 
as  standing  alone  by  the  unaided  force  of 
his  genius,  forgetting  that  no  genius,  how- 
ever brilliant,  can  accomplish  anything 
without   having  behind  it   a  vast  mass  of 


54  FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

effort  which  too  often  lacks  all  recognition 
by  posterity.  In  the  same  way,  Fleinming 
keeps  touch  with  the  popular  poetry  before 
Opitz  petrified  verse  by  the  pedantic  rules 
that  ran  over  the  whole  of  Europe.  Gun- 
ther,  too,  wrote  verses  with  the  same 
charm;  and,  in  explanation  of  this  fact,  it 
may  be  possible  to  suggest  that,  inasmuch 
as  he  wrote  many  songs  to  be  sung  by  his 
fellow-students,  it  was  to  the  preservation, 
among  these  upholders  of  tradition,  of  the 
"  Volkspoesie,"  that  is  due  his  adoption  of 
this  method.^  Even  now,  among  student- 
songs,  there  survive  possibly  the  "  Lauriger 
Horatius,"  and  certainly  the  "  Gaudeamus 
Igitur,"^  as  indubitable  reminiscences  of  the 
carmina  hurana  of  the  Middle  Ages  ;  and 
while  the  students  composed  verses  after  the 

*  Something  of  the  kind  is  hinted  at  by  Erich  Schmidt  in 
his  "  Komodien  vom  Studentenleben  aus  dem  sechzehnten 
und  siebzehnten  Jabrlinndert  "  (Leipzig,  1880),  p.  21. 

*  Vide  Creizenach  "  Die  Aeneis,  die  vierte  Ecloge,  und 
die  Pharsalia  im  Mittelalter,"  Frankfurt-a-M.,  1864,  p.  16, 
note  91,  and  Pernwertli  von  Bai'nstein,  "  Ubi  sunt  qui  ante 
nos  in  mundo  fuei-e?  "     Wiii-zburg,  1881,  pp.  104  and  133. 


FROM    OPITZ    TO    LESSING.  55 

prevailing  taste,  when  they  wished  to  give 
proof  of  their  accomplishments,  they  sang 
for  their  own  dehght  after  the  older  mod- 
els. A  moment's  reflection  will  make  clear 
the  assertion  that  students  are  upholders 
of  tradition;  the  now  obsolescent  hazing, 
the  drinking  customs  of  German  societies, 
carry  the  sociologist  back  to  a  remote  past. 
Gunther's  lyrics  have  at  least  the  charm  of 
vividness,  and  it  is  by  no  means  impossible 
to  believe  that  there  survived  in  private  life 
in  Germany  a  spring  of  song  which  even 
the  abundant  culture  of  pseudo-classicism 
did  not  extirpate,  though  it  hid  it  from 
observation.  This  was  what  fed  Gunther, 
as,  nearly  a  century  later,  it  inspired  Burns, 
who  sang  songs  to  be  sung,  not  merely 
songs  to  be  criticised  and  read. 

And  Gunther's  life  shows  the  misery  that 
surely  awaits  the  man  who  is  bold  enough 
to  tell  his  generation  the  things  that  only 
the  next  generation  shall  delight  to  hear. 
Fleming,     too,     in     spite   of   his   superior 


56  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSEN^G. 

poetic  power,  sang  to  deaf  ears.  Gunther's 
career  was  one  of  wretched  failure,  —  partly, 
to  be  sure,  from  his  own  fault;  but  these 
faults  were  in  some  measure  the  result  of 
his  2^erception  of  his  unsuitability  for  the 
artificial  work  that  was  demanded  of  him. 
Wretched  rhymesters  like  Konig  and 
Besser  were  at  the  top  of  the  wave,  and  it 
was  almost  a  century  before  he  received 
anything  like  proper  recognition,  although 
there  was  an  undercurrent  of  admiration  for 
him  among  the  people  whose  voice  is  never 
heai'd  in  public.  His  life,  like  that  of  Blake, 
Collins,  Gray,  even  Burns,  shows  how 
terrible  is  the  fate  of  the  poet  who  lives  in 
an  unpoetic  age.  To  win  temporary  suc- 
cess he  must  bow  to  the  literary  taste  of 
the  day,  however  artificial  it  may  be,  as,  to 
avoid  being  mobbed  in  the  streets,  he  must 
wear  the  dress  of  the  period. 

Gunther  was  far  removed  from  the  path 
which  poetry  was  then  to  follow,  although 
dim  signs  of  a  change  soon  began  to  show 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSEN^G.  57 

themselves.  We  have  seen  hitherto  the 
indications  of  scarcely  anything  but  the 
French  influence;  that  of  England  began 
very  gradually  at  about  this  time  to  make 
itself  felt.  When  reason  was  laying  its 
cold  hand  on  poetry,  in  Germany  as  well  as 
in  England  little  indications  of  revolt  be- 
gan to  make  their  appearance.  To  speak 
of  Brookes  as  the  maker  of  an  epoch  seems 
like  a  misuse  of  language.  He  was  the 
most  humdrum  of  mortals;  his  statement 
of  the  influences  that  led  him  to  the  com- 
position of  verse  might  be  a  description  of 
the  way  in  which  he  undertook  to  pick  up 
horseshoes.  The  poems  themselves  are  ex- 
cessively monotonous  and  often  ludicrous, 
but  they  conveyed  a  novelty  to  readers  tired 
of  argument  in  verse,  and  had  an  influence 
wholly  disproportionate  to  their  rhetorical 
merit.  Yet,  if  w^  remember  that  what  is 
said  for  the  first  time  must  be  ill  said,  and 
that  only  practice  can  give  anything  like 
perfection,  we  shall  cease  to  be  surprised. 


58  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

The  head  waters  of  the  mightiest  river  are 
petty  enough;  we  can  step  over  the  spring 
from  which  it  rises  without  an  effort;  and, 
as  it  would  be  a  hasty  notion  of  physical 
geography  to  suppose  that  the  Mississippi 
flows  in  its  full,  broad  majesty  from  a 
gorgeous  grotto,  so  it  is  with  intellectual 
movements,  which  start  from  obscure  cor- 
ners: it  would  be  a  great  blunder  to  expect 
always  to  trace  them  back  to  grand  and 
dignified  beginnings.  Yet  such  is  the  mis- 
taken notion  of  the  daemonic  splendour  of 
genius,  that  half  of  us  are  amazed  to  find 
that  the  splendour  is  only  a  later  accompa- 
niment, and  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
humble  beginning.  Indeed,  it  is  a  question 
whether  praise  and  blame,  admiration  and 
contempt,  have  anything  whatsoever  to  do 
with  literary  history.  Our  sole  aim  shonld 
be  to  know,  and  as  invariably  any  ex- 
pression of  surprise  is  nothing  more  than  a 
confession  of  ignorance,  our  blame  can 
merely   come  from  a  lack  of  knowledge  of 


FROM   OPITZ   TO  LESSING.  59 

all  the  facts,  and  the  same  must  be  true  of 
our  praise.  The  highest  quality  of  human 
nature  is  comprehension,  which  is  a  placid 
quality.  Compi-ehension  of  Brookes,  at  any 
rate,  confers  placidity.  The  humble  bard 
devoted  himself  to  singing  the  wonders  of 
nature  and  pointing  out  how  they  redounded 
to  the  credit  of  their  Creator.  This  task 
he  performed  with  cloying  profusion,  in  his 
^^  Irdisches  Vergnugen  in  Gott."  He  seems 
to  have  taken  for  his  text  the  canticle,  "O 
all  ye  works  of  the  Lord,  bless  ye  the  Lord ; 
praise  Him,  and  magnify  Him  for  ever." 
He  gazes  into  the  "  sapphire  depth  of  the 
firmament,"  "  die  weder  Griind,  noch  Strom, 
noch  Ziel,  noch  End'  umschrenckt,"  and 
'*mein  gauzes  Wesen  ward  ein  Staub,  ein 
Punkt,  ein  I^ichts. 

Und  ich  verlor  mich  selbst.   Diss  schlug  mich  plotzlich 

nieder ; 
Verzweiflung  drohete  der  ganz  verwirrten  Brust, 
AUein,  O  heylsara  Nichts !  gltickseliger  Verlust ! 
Allgegeiiwart'ger  Gott,  in  dir  fand  ich  mich  wieder." 


60  FROM    OPITZ    TO    LESSTNG. 

He  gazes  at  tlie  cherry-blossom  at  night, 
^*beim  Mondenschein,"  and  this,  be  it  said, 
is  about  the  first  rising  of  that  German 
moon  which  is  not  yet  set.  "  Ich  gkiubt  es 
konne  niehts  von  grosser  Weisse  seyn.  Es 
sehien  ob  war  ein  Schnee  gefallen." 

Ein  jeHer,  auch  der  kleinste  Ast 

Trug  gleichsam  eim  schwere  Last 

Von  zierlich  weissen  runden  Ballen. 

Es  ist  kein  Schwan  so  weiss,  da  nemlich  jedes  Blatt, 

Indem  daselbst  des  Mondes  sanftes  Licht 

Selbst  durch  die  zarten  Blatter  bricht, 

Sogar  den  Schatten  weiss  and  sonder  Schwarze  hat, 

Unmoglich,  dacht'  ich,  kan  aiif  Erdon 

Was  weissers  angetroffen  werden. 

The  upshot  of  this  genuine  outburst  of 
admiration  is  that  it  occurred  to  him,  — 

Wie  sehr  ich  mich  am  Irdischen  ergetze, 
Dacht'  ich,  hat  Gott  dennoch  weit  grossre  Schatze, 
Die  grosste  Schonheit  dieser  Erden 
Kann   mit   der  Himmlisehen   doch    nicht  verglichen 
werden. 

The  same  appreciative  eye  was  turned  to 
the  ant,  to  various  flowers  in  his  garden,  to 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  61 

the  early  bnds  on  his  pear-tree,  which  in- 
spire him  with  this  pious  assurance  of 
security :  — 

Ach  warum  soil  denn  ich  mit  kindlichem  Vertrauen 
Auf  deiner  Lieb'  und  Vater-Treu  nicht  bauen, 
111  fester  Zuversicht,  Du  werdest  liiev,  im  Leben 
Den'n  meinigen  und  mir  leicht  Kost  and  Kleider  geben. 

In  winter  he  assures  his  Creator  that  de- 
votion is  not  frozen  out  of  him :  — 

Mein  Gott !  das  Feuer  warmet  mich 
Und  macht  mich  nur,  dass  ich  nicht  f  riere ; 
Dass  ich  im  Frost  auch  Anmuth  sptlre 
Daflir  erheb'  und  preis'  ich  dich ! 

Ich  ftihl'  jetzt  cinen  Trieb  in  mir, 
Ein  Winter-Opfer  dir  zu  bringen, 
TJnd  deim  Wander  zu  besingen 
Die  ich,  auch  selbst  im  Frost,  verspiihr. 

Even  in  the  contemplation  of  the  wolf 
he  finds  niaterial  for  spiritual  edification:  — 

Sind  auch  in  Wolfen  viele  Dinge  zu  unseren 
Nutzen  noch  zu  finden  ;  Wir  haben  nicht  nur  ihrcr 
Balge  im  scharfen  Frost  uns  zu  erfreuen,  Es  dienen 
ihrer  Glieder  viele  zu  grossem  Nutz  in  Arzeneien. 

Another  instance  may  be  taken  from  the 
chamois,  and  it  may  well  stand  as  prose :  — 


62  FROM   OPITZ   TO  LESSING. 

Fflr  die  Schwindsucht  ist  ihr  Unschlitt,  ftlrs  Gesicht 
die  Galle  gut ;  Gemsenfleisch  ist  gut  zu  esscn,  und  den 
Schwindel  heilt  ihr  Blut;  Auch  die  Haut  dicnt  mis 
nicht  minder ;  strahlet  nicht  aus  diesera  Thicr  ncbst 
der  Weisheit  und  der  Allmacht  auch  des  Schopfers 
Lieb  hervor  ? 

Yet  less  valuable  than  these  raptures 
would  be  ridicule  of  them,  and  beneath  the 
moral  lessons  which  were  part  of  the  tri- 
bute he  paid  to  the  spirit  of  his  day, —  as 
ridicule  would  be  our  tribute  to  the  spirit 
of  our  day, —  we  may  see  that  his  eye  was 
detecting  a  novel  solemnity  in  what  modern 
science  was  making  known  to  the  world. 
The  telescope  and  microscope  were  widen- 
ing the  field  of  the  emotions.  While 
Brockes  was  exhaling  in  verse  the  raptures 
he  felt  over  the  "  Punckten-formigen  Ge- 
stalt  der  Himmels-Lichter,"  which  gave  him 
'^  sichere  Schlusse,"  and  he  felt  that  "  ich 
selber  etwas  grosses  bin,"  and  while  in  the 
blue  firmament  there  was  detected, — 

Ein  ewiges,  allgegenwartig's  all, 

Ein  unermess'lichs  Ganz,  in  dem,  als  wie  ein  Ball 


FROM   OPITZ    TO  LESSIXG.  63 

Ira  weiten  Ocean,  nicht  nur  die  Erd'allein, 
Nein,  ein  unzahlbar  Herr  von  Sonnen,  Sternen,  Erden, 
Dir  bloss  durch  ihn  umringt,  erfallt,  erhalten  werden, 
In  stiller  Majestat,  in  reger  Ruhe  schwimmt. 

Addison,  in  the  Spectator,  was  saying  very 
nearly  the  same  thing  in  prose :  — 

But  when  we  survey  the  whole  earth  at  once,  and 
the  several  planets  that  lie  within  its  neighborhood, 
we  are  filled  with  a  pleasing  astonishment  to  see  so 
many  worlds  hanging  one  above  another,  and  sliding 
round  their  axles  in  such  an  amazing  pomp  and  solem- 
nity.    (No.  420.) 

Again  (Ko.  565)  :  — 

Were  the  sun,  which  enlightens  the  part  of  the 
creation,  with  all  the  host  of  planetary  worlds  that 
move  about  him,  utterly  extinguished  and  annihilated, 
they  would  not  be  missed  more  than  a  grain  of  sand 
upon  the  sea  shore.  ...  In  this  consideration 
of  God  Almighty's  omnipresence  and  omniscience 
every  uncomfortable  thought  vanishes.  He  cannot 
but  regard  everything  that  has  being,  especially  such 
of  his  creatures  who  fear  they  are  not  regarded  by 
him,  etc. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  how  these  dis- 
coveries  rendered   men   discontented   with 


64  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSUfG. 

the  narrow  limitations  that  had  previously 
impressed  themselves  on  human  thought 
and  feelings.  The  spirit  of  rationalism 
appeared  inevitably  when  the  rigidity  of 
old  superstitions  was  broken;  man  assumed 
new  importance  by  the  side  of  which  con- 
ventions of  royalty  and  aristocracy  were 
insignificant,  and  the  new  thought  of  the 
eighteenth  century  ma}^  be  dated  from  this 
widening  of  men's  knowledge.  Yet  there 
are  those  who  lament  the  depressing 
effect  that  science  has  upon  letters.  Is 
literature,  then,  a  superstition  that  must 
shun  the  light  ? 

In  Brookes  the  new  feeling  was  often 
expressed  in  a  way  that  now  seems  gro- 
tesque. When  he  began  to  observe  his 
emotions  of  delight  he  confounded  them 
in  a  most  unconventional  way.  We  have 
seen  with  what  delight  he  gazed  at  the 
white  blossoms  in  the  moonlight,  and  how 
he  expressed  his  pleasure  as  a  Chinese  or 
Japanese  poet  might  do  until  he  brought  , 


FROM   OPITZ    TO    LESSING.  65 

up  with  his  moral,  but  in  these  lines  we 

find  him  without  a  rival:  — 

Ach  welche  Sussigkeit ! 
Welch  ausserlich  und  innerlichs  Ergetzen 
Empfindet  man  bey  stiller  Abend-Zeit, 
Weun  wir  den  mtiden  Leib  auf  weichen  Feder- 

Decken, 
Mit  einigen  Ervvegen  strecken  ! 

Yet  even  here,  as  Brandl  has  well  said 
in  his  monograph  on  Brockes,^  these  Philis- 
tine lines  are  a  natural  consequence  of 
his  way  of  regarding  humanity.  Invari- 
ably selection  is  something  later  than  the 
first  feeling.  Brockes  also  translated 
Pope's  "Essay  on  Man"  in  1740,  and 
Thomson's  "  Seasons  "  in  1745.  Some  of 
the  extracts  that  are  given  above  will  show 
his  indebtedness  to  English  models;  and, 
like  them,  he  endeavored  to  teach  how  every 
man  might  make  better  use  of  his  senses,  a 
lesson  that  he  will  be  credited  with  teach- 
ing the  Germans. 

Haller    (1708-1777)  was   a  man   of  far 

1  Page  65. 


66  FROM  OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

more  importance.  He  began,  to  be  sure, 
under  the  inspiration  of  Lohenstein  and 
what  is  called  the  second  Silesian  school, 
following  the  unwritten  law  in  accordance 
with  which  almost  every  writer  first  pays 
allegiance  to  fading  authorities,  and  is  even 
more  old-fashioned  than  his  adult  contem- 
poraries; but  the  influence  of  the  philoso- 
phical English  poetry,  especially  that  of 
Pope,  soon  led  him  to  writing  after  their 
own  method.  His  long  poem  on  the  Origin 
of  Evil  is  one  of  this  sort ;  but  his  "  Die 
Alpcn  "  is  the  one  on  which  his  poetical 
fame  now  rests,  although  the  "  Ode  to  Eter- 
nity" possibl}''  touches  a  higher  chord.  The 
poem  on  the  Alps  describes  the  majesty 
of  mountain  scenery  with  an  eloquence 
that  had  no  precedent.  To  be  sure,  the 
poet  reminds  us  at  times  that  — 

der  Himmel  has  diess  Land  noch  niehr  geliebet, 

Wo   nichts,  was   nothig,  fehlt,  und   nur  was   niitzet, 

bltiht, 
Der  Berge  wachsend  Eis,  der  Felse  steile  Wande 
Sind  selbst  zum  NUtzen  da,  und  tranken  das  Gelande. 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSIISTG.  67 

and  when  — 

senkt  ein  kahler  Berg  die  glatten  Wande  nieder 

Nicht  fern  vora  Else  streckt,  voll  f utterreicher  Weide, 
Ein  fruchtbares  Gebfirg  den  breiten  Rticken  her, 
Sein  saufter  Abhang  glanzt  von  reifendem  Getreide, 
Und  seine  Htigel  sind  von  Hundert  Herden  schwer. 

Yet  he  has  an  eye  at  times  for  the  scenery 
alone,  apart  from  the  fertility  of  the  soil :  — 

Hier  zeigbt  ein  steiler  Berg  die  mauergleichen  Spitzen, 
Ein  Waldstrom  eilt  hindurch,  und  sturzet  Fall  auf  Fall, 
Der  dickbeschaumte   Fluss  dringt   durch  der   Felsen 

Ritzen, 
Und  schiesst  mit  gaher  Kraft  weit  tiber  ihren  Wall. 

And  before  this :  — 

Wenn  Titans  erster  Strahl  der  gipfel  Schnee  vergfildet, 
'  Und  sein  verklarter  Blick  die  Nebel  unterdriickt, 
So  wird,  was  die  Natur  am  prachtigsten  gcbildet, 
Mit  immer  neuer  Lust  von  einem  Berg  erblickt. 

Still,  after  all,  it  is  rather  the  pleasant 
valleys  than  the  steep  mountains  that  catch 
his  eye.  Yet  it  is  to  Haller's  credit  that 
he  was  not,  like  most  of  his  contemporaries, 
simply  repelled  by  the  savage  gloom  of  the 


68  FROM   OPITZ  TO   LESSIKG. 

mountains.  After  all,  while  he  belonged 
to  his  generation,  as  these  extracts  show, 
he  was  yet  raised  above  them  by  his  posi- 
tion as  a  man  of  science  to  whom  every- 
thing appealed;  and  in  this  poem  he  indi- 
cated —  though  confusedly  —  the  direction 
in  which  taste  was  about  to  move.  We 
notice  this  more  especially  in  his  picture 
of  the  Arcadian  simplicity  of  the  Swiss. 
He  made  the  same  comparison  between 
their  innocence  and  the  corruption  of  the 
civilized  world  that,  nearly  half  a  centuiy 
later,  Rousseau  eloquently  presented  to  his 
fascinated  readers.  This  fact  gives  the 
poem  a  most  important  position  in  literary 
history;  for,  while  what  he  said  about  the 
scenery  is  more  truly  an  indication  than 
an  expression  of  our  later  raptures,  his 
accounts  of  the  idyUic  life  of  the  Swiss 
clearly  foreboded  Gellert  and  Rousseau.  In 
England  James  Thomson,  as  Taine  says,* 

i"Histoi7  of  English  Literature."    New  York:  1861, 
i.  219. 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  69 

''thirty  years  before  Rousseau,  had  ex- 
pressed all  Rousseau's  sentiments,  almost 
in  the  same  style."  He,  too,  compared  the 
corruptions  of  modern  times  with  the  inno- 
cent past,  and  the  vicious  city  with  the 
idyllic  country.  He  was  among  the  first 
to  sing  the  beauty  of  nature,  and  it  is 
curious  to  observe  that  he  was  a  contem- 
porary of  Haller,  as  well  as  a  fellow- 
worker.  Thomson  began  his  "  Liberty  "  in 
1731,  and  the  first  parts  of  it  appeared  in 
1734.  Haller's  "Die  Alpen"  was  written 
in  1729  and  published  in  1732.  The  "  Sea- 
sons "  was  completed  by  1730.  Thus,  we 
see  the  simultaneous  appearance  in  Swit- 
zerland and  England  of  the  spirit  that  was 
to  destroy  the  current  thought;  and  pos- 
sibly, in  time,  the  discovery  of  other  alleged 
coincidences  of  this  sort  will  be  of  service 
in  dispelling  the  notion  that  the  study  of 
literature  has  no  scientific  value. 

Haller's  longer  philosophical  poems  have 
often  aroused  discussion  as  to  whether  or 


70  FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

not  Hallei*  should  be  regarded  as  a  direct 
imitator  of  Pope,  with  whom  he  became  a 
fellow-worker  as  he  had  been  of  Thomson. 
The  question  need  not  detain  us  long.  It 
is  only  our  duty  to  remember  that  the 
whole  matter  of  plagiaiism  is  in  a  very 
crude  state.  If  we  look  at  the  subject 
fairly,  we  shall  see  at  once  that  any  man 
who  is  abreast  with  his  generation,  who  has 
been  exposed  to  the  same  influences  as  his 
contemporaries,  will  [)robably  see  the  next 
step  that  the  processes  of  thought  demand 
to  be  taken  in  just  the  same  way  as  some 
one  else  will  see  it.  Hence,  when  we  find, 
at  similar  stages  of  culture  throughout 
Europe,  different  races  repeating  one  an- 
other's experiences,  we  shall  observe  that 
the  instinct  of  imitation  is  far  from  being 
the  sole  cause  of  the  similarity  of  their 
actions.  Men  in  England  and  men  in  Ger- 
many find  siijiilar  solutions  for  the  same 
problems,  because  they  have  the  same  ma- 
terials for  devising  an  answer.     Pope  had 


FROM  OPITZ    TO  LESSING.  71 

been  moved  by  Shaftesbury  and  Leibnitz  in 
writing  his  "  Essay  on  Man ; "  and  Haller, 
another  cultivated  man,  was  inspired  by 
Shaftesbury  and  Leibnitz  in  writing  his 
philosophical  poetry.  That  there  was  a 
likeness  between  the  work  of  the  two  men 
is  certainly  less  surprising  than  would  be 
its  absence.  We  may  expect  to  find  the 
men  of  an  army  near  together  and  acting 
with  some  uniformity  when  they  are  mak- 
ing their  way  through  woods  or  fording  a 
stream ;  and  every  generation  is,  as  it  were, 
an  army  that  is  doing  its  best  to  conquer 
the  world.  Some  are  skirmishers  in  ad- 
vance, and  some  are  laggards  in  the  rear; 
the  majority  are  in  a  monotonous  mass, 
keeping  touch  with  one  another,  and  mov- 
ing in  one  uniform  direction,  with  the 
skirmishers  only  a  little  in  advance  and 
resting  on  the  main  body. 

In  Hagedorn  (1708-1754)  we  have  a  poet 
whose  importance  the  literary  historians  of 
Germany  are  never  tired  of  pointing  out. 


72  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

He  it  was  who  brought  into  repute  some  of 
the  forms  of  verse  that  were  much  admired 
in  France  and  England,  and  remained  popu- 
lar in  Germany  until  —  it  is  scarcely  too 
much  to  say — poets  found  that  they  had 
really  a  message  to  deliver.  Hagedorn  in- 
troduced in  their  modern  form  the  lyric,  the 
fable,  and  the  poetic  tale.  Primarily,  all  of 
these  modes  of  expression  were  French ;  yet 
in  England  they  flourished  in  the  hands  of 
Prior,  Swift,  and  Gay;  while  in  Germany 
they  all,  but  especially  the  fable,  developed 
in  a  slightly  different  way.  It  was  doubt- 
less this  novel  urbanity,  familiar  enough 
elsewhere,  but  strange  here,  that  gave 
Hagedorn  his  fame. 


CHAPTER  in. 

While  the  doors  were  thus  opened  to 
English  influence  in  poetry,  Enghsh  prose 
was  also  entering  into  Germany,  as  we  see 
by  the  numberless  imitations  of  "  Robinson 
Crusoe,"  that  speedily  appeared  after  the 
translation  of  the  unsurpassed  original. 
While  all  that  has  been  hitherto  described 
belongs  to  the  history  of  what  was  dis- 
tinctly a  literary  class,  the  Robinsonaden, 
as  they  were  called,  were  a  part  of  popular 
literature.  They  amalgamated  with  the 
stories  that  appeared  after  the  Thirty  Years' 
War,  which  were  reminiscences  of  imita- 
tions of  the  Spanish  picaresque  tales;  and, 
although  crude  and  slight,  they  yet  showed, 
as  well  as  furthered,  the  general  interest  in 
something  adventurous  and  foreign.  The 
English    "Robinson    Crusoe"    was   a   co- 

73 


74  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

herent  part  of  the  busy,  roaming,  active 
English  life;  the  German  imitations  had, 
too  often,  as  vague  a  background  of  reality 
as  have  Jules  Yerne's  stories.  And,  as 
Karl  Elze  has  pointed  out,^  it  was  in  the 
inland  countries  that  most  of  them  were 
written,  and  not  in  the  maritime  towns. 
The  best  of  them  all,  "  The  Swiss  Family 
Robinson,"  had  its  birthplace  far  from  salt- 
water. 

Much  more  important  were  the  English 
essays,  the  "Spectator,"  etc.,  which  imme- 
diately called  forth  a  number  of  German 
imitations.  I  have  shown  elsewhere  the 
steps  by  which  the  English  originals  ac- 
quired the  form  by  which  they  are  still  well 
known  to  us,  and  which  for  a  century  was 
a  favorite  method  of  conveying  amusement 
and  instruction  to  the  public.  In  Germany 
they  were  equally  popular,  though,  as  was 
to  be  expected,   of  far  less  literary  merit. 

1  "Die  Englische  Sprache  nnd  Literatur  in  Deutscli- 
land."    Dresden:  1864,  p.  41. 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  75 

They  at  present  concern  us  as  the  weapons 
with  which  was  fought  out  the  contest 
between  French  and  Enghsh  influence  in 
Germany.  We  have  already  seen  the 
modest  beginnings  of  French  authority  in 
the  satiric  and  courtly  poems  of  Canitz  and 
others ;  but  this  asserted  itself  most  strongly 
in  the  work  of  Gottsched,  who  was  the 
most  prominent  figure  in  the  literature  of 
the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
the  most  ludicrous  in  the  eyes  of  men  since 
that  period.  This  subsequent  contempt  is 
the  price  he  has  paid  for  the  adoration  he 
received  in  his  lifetime  for  giving  the  most 
complete  expression  to  the  taste  of  his  con- 
temporaries. Yet  of  late  he  is  receiving  in 
some  measure  fuller  justice  from  those 
writers  of  literary  history  who  perceive 
that  he  did  but  carry  the  Germans  through 
an  inevitable  stage  of  their  progress.  Rid- 
icule of  his  lessons  is  certainly  a  barren 
method :  one  might  as  well  laugh  at  a  tree 
for  shedding  its  leaves  in  autumn,  as  at  the 


76  FROM   OPITZ   TO  LESSING. 

Germans  for  obeying  an  influence  that 
overwhelmed  the  whole  of  civilized  Europe. 
Gottsched  was  born  in  1700,  and,  after 
completing  his  studies  in  Konigsberg,  he 
made  his  way  to  Leipzig,  which  was  then 
distinctly  a  literary  centre.  Its  book  trade 
put  the  town  into  direct  communication 
with  the  whole  of  Germany.  Already  a 
society  existed  since  1697  which  was  de- 
voted to  the  study  of  the  German  language, 
and  of  this  Gottsched  was  soon  made  a 
member.  In  this  society  he  at  once  became 
prominent;  he  got  its  name  changed  from 
the  "  Deutschiibende  Gesellschaft "  to  the 
"Deutsche  Gesellschaft;"  and  it  at  once 
became  the  model  of  a  number  of  similar 
varieties  iii  different  parts  of  Germany. 
The  new  non-resident  members  and  the 
related  societies  united  in  recognizing 
Gottsched's  importance,  and  he  found  him- 
self in  a  position  of  great  influence.  He 
maintained  himself  here  by  untiring  labor, 
and  it  is  easy  to  see  how  much  good  work 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  77 

lay  beneath  much  that  posterity  has  agreed 
to  condemn.  His  first  efforts  were  in  a 
humble  sphere.  He  wrote  book  after  book 
on  rhetoric,  grammar,  eloquence,  the  art  of 
verse;  he  gave  precision  to  the  confused 
unsettled  usage  of  the  German  tongue,  and 
thus  met  the  generally  felt  need  of  a  com- 
mon means  of  communication  among  other 
classes  than  the  learned ;  for  in  Germany,  as 
in  England,  after  the  revolution  of  1688, 
the  bourgeoisie  was  beginning  to  interest 
itself  in  litei*ature.^  It  was  gradually  losing 
interest  in  the  impossible  romances  that  had 
given  the  intensest  pleasure  not  many  years 
before,  and  which  still  lingered  as  the  fa- 
vorite reading  of  the  ignorant  and  of  chil- 
dren. In  both  countries  there  existed  a 
strong  yearning  for  moral  and  social  in- 
struction. The  essayists  soon  undertook  to 
provide  this,  and  Gottsched  soon  established 


1  Vide  Jnlian  Schmidt,  "  Geschichte  des  geistigen  Lebens 
in  Deutschland  von  Leibnitz  bis  auf  Lessing's  Tod."  Leip- 
zig: 1862,  V.  i.,  436  ff. 


78  FBOM   OPITZ   TO  LESSING. 

a  paper,  in  imitation  of  the  English  "  Spec- 
tator." The  subject  that  he  had  nearest  at 
heart  Avas  the  elevation  of  German  Utera- 
ture,  which  was  certainly  an  hononrable 
ambition ;  and  he  made  a  discreet  choice  in 
selecting  the  drama  as  the  means  best  suited 
for  bringing  literature  into  close  relation 
with  the  life  of  the  people.  To  be  sure,  we 
now  can  see  the  certain  failure  of  the  ar- 
tificial alliance  which  he  endeavoured  to 
establish ;  but,  in  selecting  the  French  stage 
for  his  model,  he  did  the  only  thing  which 
it  was  possible  for  him  to  do.  It  is  idle  to 
condemn  Gottsched  for  this  choice,  inas- 
much as  there  was  actually  no  alternative 
before  him.  When  even  in  England,  with 
Shakespeare  and  his  fellow-workers  to  in- 
spire opposition  to  the  French  influence, 
the  whole  current  ran  for  a  time  in  this 
direction,  there  is  no  need  for  wondering 
that  Gottsched  accepted  what  was  most 
successful  for  his  model.  Moreover,  the 
attempt  to  revive  the  German  drama,  which 


FKOM    OPITZ    TO    LESSING.  79 

at  the  best  had  never  flourished,  and  had 
sunk  to  a  wretched  depth,  would  have  been 
hopeless;  and,  in  adopting  French  models, 
Gottsched,  it  is  further  to  be  noted,  also 
lent  his  encouragement  to  the  general  desire 
for  moral  teaching.  Dr.  Johnson,  in  the 
preface  to  his  Shakespeare,  lamented  that 
poet's  indifference  to  right  and  wrong  and 
to  "opportunities  of  instructing  and  de- 
lighting," and  that  he  wrote  "  without  any 
moral  purpose,"  comparing  him  unfavorably 
in  this  respect  with  the  later  writers  of  the 
English  tragedy;  and  in  Racine's  later 
l)lays,  piety  had  asserted  itself  with  notice- 
able earnestness.  Consequently,  in  doing 
his  best  to  expel  grossness  and  roughness 
from  the  German  stage,  Gottsched  had  the 
double  consolation  of  encouraging  good 
morals  as  well  as  good  letters.  Addison 
must  have  known  the  same  feeling  when  he 
wrote  his  "Cato"  to  fill  the  place  of  the 
extravagant  heroic  plays.  He  at  once 
began  to  translate,  with  the  aid  of  his  wife 


80  FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSINO. 

and  children,  the  most  celebrated  French 
tragedies,  and  soon  found  encouragement  in 
the  success  of  the  actors,  who  were  readily 
induced  to  take  an  interest  in  this  new 
venture.  His  own  play,  "  Der  sterbende 
Cato,"  modelled  on  Addison's  Cato,  and 
one  by  Desehamps,  was  one  of  many  ex- 
amples of  the  readiness  of  the  Germans. 
The  German  opera  was  driven  away,  and 
the  equivalent  of  the  English  clown  was 
finally  banished  from  the  stage.  It  has 
been  given  to  few  literary  autocrats  to  attain 
anything  like  his  success.  His  ambition 
did  not  stop  here ;  he  sought  to  extend  his 
domain  over  the  whole  realm  of  poetry; 
but  he  very  soon  met  with  opposition.  We 
shall  soon  see  how  the  carefully  constructed 
theory  of  the  drama  fell  into  ruins;  but, 
before  that  crash,  Gottsched  was  engaged 
in  a  bitter  controversy  regarding  the  true 
meaning  of  poetry,  his  antagonists  being 
two  Swiss  writers,  Bodmer  (1698-1783) 
and  Breitinger  (1701-1776).     It  is  worthy 


FROM    OPITZ    TO    LESSING.  81 

of  note  that  his  opponents  lived  in  Switzer- 
land, a  country  that  had  been  saved  from 
some  of  the  movements  of  modern  taste  by, 
one  may  fairly  say,  its  physical  geography. 
For  mountains  do  not  merely  protect  those 
who  live  near  them  from  the  winds  of 
heaven  that  sweep  unbroken  over  the  level 
plain;  they  serve  as  a  barrier  in  the  path 
of  travellers;  they  destroy  readiness  of 
communication;  and,  as  we  find  old-fash- 
ioned dresses  in  their  seclusion,  and  the  phil- 
ologist lights  on  idioms  forgotten  elsewhere, 
so  the  thoughts  of  the  people  were  to  some 
extent  preserved  from  the  influence  of  prin- 
ciples that  have  full  sway  elsewhere.  In 
Zurich,  which  belonged  to  the  Protestant 
part  of  Switzerland,  there  existed  at  the 
beginning  of  the  last  century  a  general 
interest  in  letters.  Its  exceptional  political 
and  religious  condition  secured  for  it  the 
same  freedom  in  forming  intellectual  alli- 
ances that  is  given  to  us  Americans  at  the 
present   day,   and   led    it   naturally   to   an 


82  FIIOM   OPITZ    TO    LESSTNG. 

interest  in  England,  where  there  existed 
similar  political  freedom  and  religious  zeal. 
Moreover,  the  prominence  of  England  in 
science  attracted  to  it  the  attention  of  stu- 
dents, just  as  all  serious  workers  now 
follow  German  methods. 

Bodmer  and  Breitinger  were  moved  by 
admiration  of  the  "  Spectator  "  to  establish 
a  similar  publication  in  Zurich ;  and  Addi- 
son's enthusiastic  praise  of  Milton  soon 
found  enthusiastic  admirers  in  these  two 
men.  Whereas  they  had  begun  their  lit- 
erary career  by  acknowledging  Gottsched's 
supremacy,  they  soon  wandered  from  the 
straight  and  narrow  path  which  he  had 
traced  for  all  lovers  of  literature;  and,  as 
early  as  1724,  Bodmer  had  translated  the 
"  Paradise  Lost,"  although  his  version  was 
not  published  until  1732;  and  in  1737  he 
translated  Butler's  "  Hudibras."  Although 
at  first  Gottsched  praised  the  German  trans- 
lation of  Milton's  poem,  he  afterwards 
took   the   opposite    view,  and    the   contest 


PEOM   OPITZ    TO  LESSING.  83 

between  the  Swiss  and  the  Leipzig  school 
soon  became  bitter.  It  was  in  1740  that  the 
Zurich  leaders  opened  all  their  batteries, 
and  the  fray  fairly  began.  That  Gottsched 
should  have  opposed  any  assertion  of  the 
authority  of  Milton  is,  when  we  consider  his 
literary  principles,  perfectly  natural.  It  was 
not  a  simple  personal  choice  that  decided 
him,  though  possibly  he  may  have  thought 
so,  any  more  than  it  is  true  that  a  stream 
flows  to  the  sea  by  personal  choice.  If 
its  level  lies  through  a  sandy  region,  it 
must  flow  over  sand;  and  it  is  w^ith  equal 
inevitableness  that  Gottsched's  theories 
hardened  his  heart  against  Milton.  He 
was  by  no  means  alone  in  his  opposition. 
It  will  be  remembered  that  the  great 
English  poet  had  been  neglected  by  his 
fellow-countrymen  when  Addison  under- 
took his  resuscitation  and  proved  his  ex- 
cellence by  the  use  of  the  weapons  of  the 
very  men  who  condemned  his  sins  against 
the  poetry  of  reason.    Yet  the  whole  school 


84  FROM    OPITZ    TO    LESSING. 

of  critics,  from  Rymer  to  Dr.  Johnson,  who 
believed  in  the  principles  that  animated 
Gottsched,  nourished  open  or  secret  oppo- 
sition to  Milton.  They  believed  that  rhyme 
was  essential  to  poetry,  and,  so  believing, 
they  .  detested  blank  verse.  They  liked 
directness  and  exactness  of  speech;  Mil- 
ton's language,  with  its  remote  suggestions 
and  majestic  harmonies,  sinned  against  this 
essential  necessity.  In  a  word,  he  was  the 
last  of  the  poets  of  the  inspiration  of  the 
Kenaissance;  they  were  earnest  adherents 
of  the  school  that  aimed  at  the  correction 
of  its  predecessors  and  could  in  no  way 
admire  him.  In  Germany,  as  in  England, 
the  appreciation  of  Milton's  merits  became 
the  test  of  literary  preferences;  and,  in  the 
discussion  that  went  on,  we  may  see,  now 
that  the  smoke  of  the  battle  is  blown  away, 
—  a  battle  in  which  the  amount  of  powder 
burned  was  in  no  proportion  to  the  size  or 
number  of  the  bullets, —  we  may  see,  I  say, 
in  th.e  subsequent  discussion,  how  much  the 


FROM   OPITZ   TO  LESSING.  85 

inconsistencies  with  which  both  sides  have 
been  charged  were  inherent  in  the  prin- 
ciples from  which  they  started.  The  Swiss 
critics,  in  their  zeal  against  Gottsched  and 
all  that  he  represented,  asserted  that  the 
poet  should  have  nothing  to  do  with  what 
was  natural  and  common,  but  should  de- 
scribe only  what  was  supernatural  and 
wonderful;  and,  although  they  attacked 
with  intelligence  the  weak  points  of  Gotts- 
ched's  theoiy,  the  best  that  they  could  do  in 
constructing  a  positive  theory  was  to  com- 
mend fables  like  ^sop's  as  a  model.  Yet 
it  is  not  merely  what  a  critic  positively 
affirms  that  inspires  those  who  listen  to 
him.  They  are  moved  by  the  implications 
which  the  critic  himself  may  not  fully 
develop;  and,  in  opposing  Bodmer  and 
Breitinger,  Gottsched  was  moved  by  the 
same  detestation  of  their  belief  in  enthusi- 
asm as  was  Pope  when  he  made  Theobald 
the  main  hero  of  his  "Dunciad;"  for 
Theobald  had  ventured  to  say,  in  the  pref- 


86  FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSLN^G. 

ace  to  his  edition  of  the  works  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  that  he  thought  enthusiasm 
was  the  very  essence  of  poetry. 

Gottsched,  on  the  other  hand,  maintained 
that  nothing  lay  nearer  men's  interests  than 
human  nature,  and  that  experiments  with 
the  supernatural  must  necessarily  fail,  and 
were  only  very  seldom  allowable.  '  Bodmer's 
"  ^oachide  "  (translated  into  English  about 
1764)  must  have  seemed  to  him  to  have 
been  written  to  corroborate  his  views;  and 
even  Klopstock's  "Messiah"  betrays  all 
the  weakness  of  his  antagonist;  but  Gott- 
sched went  much  further:  he  had  nothing 
but  faint  praise  for  Homer;  Milton  he  de- 
tested; Ariosto's  poems,  he  said,  were 
delirious  visions,  without  order  or  resem- 
blance to  truth;  Tasso  had  "  such  love  for 
devilishness  that  he  jumbled  together  the 
mass  and  htany  with  conspiracies  and 
magical  formulas,  heaven  with  hell,  Chris- 
tianity with  paganism  and  Mohammedan 
superstition,   in   the   most   offensive   way," 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSIN^G.  87 

etc.  Yet  it  is  well,  before  condemning,  to 
remember  Voltaire's  assertion  of  the  su- 
periority of  Tasso  to  Homer,  Johnson's 
continual  contempt  for  Milton,  and  the  slow 
growth  in  England,  among  the  most  culti- 
vated, of  Shakespeare's  fame.  If  Gottsched 
was  more  distinctly  philistine  in  his  views 
than  the  men  of  other  countries,  it  must 
not  be  forgotten  that  the  sort  of  mistake 
which  he  made  was  but  the  natural  expres- 
sion of  a  widespread  error.  He  paid  dearly 
for  living  in  a  rude,  unpolished  country, 
just  as  his  antagonists  manifested  their  pro- 
vincialism by  occasional  indiscreet  admira- 
tion. Gottsched,  too,  lived  long  enough  to 
find  his  name  a  byword;  to  see  himself 
deserted  by  every  one;  and  Germany,  in 
whose  behalf  he  had  toiled  so  arduously, 
wholly  abandoned  to  the  heresies  that  he  had 
fought  with  tireless  zeal.  He  died  in  1766, 
the  year  in  which  Lessing's  "  Laocoon " 
appeared,  and  just  before  the  "Hamburger 
Dramaturgic  "  and  "  Minna  von  Barnhelm  " 


88  PROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

made  the  victory  of  the  new  generation 
complete. 

Long  before  his  death,  modest  prepara- 
tions were  making  for  the  coming  change. 
8ome  young  men  who  started  as  Gotts- 
ched's  disciples  gradually  freed  themselves 
from  his  control,  and,  in  the  "  Bremer 
Beitrage,"  devoted  their  attention  to  the 
newer  and  less  rigorous  forms  of  literature. 
Such  were  Gartner,  Rabener,  Elias  Schlegel, 
Cramer,  and  others;  but  their  work  was  of 
but  moderate  importance.  Gellert,  who 
used  the  fable  as  a  means  of  conveying 
instruction  and  temperate  delight,  moved 
in  the  same  direction;  but  the  fable,  the 
Anacreontic  song,  the  moral  tale,  and  the 
improving  satire,  which  flourished  simul- 
taneously, seem  to  be  more  heavily  freight- 
ed  with    the  past    than    with  the   future. 

By  what  they  did  after  these  models,  the 
Germans  seemed  to  themselves  to  be  keep- 
ing step  with  the  rest  of  Europe,  but  it 
was  only  in  a  half-hearted  way;  and  Bod- 


FROM   OPITZ    TO    LESSING.  89 

mer  eagerly  yearned  for  some  one  who 
should  write  the  missing  epic  in  the  Mil- 
tonic  spirit,  and  thus  justify  his  criticisms 
as  well  as  complete  German  literature.  At 
length  he  found  what  he  had  sought  in 
Klopstock  (1724-1803),  the  first  three 
books  of  whose  "  Messias  "  were  published 
in  the  "Bremer  Beitrage "  in  1748.  At 
first  the  poem  excited  as  little  interest  in 
Germany  as  it  can  now  in  this  country; 
but  Bodmer  was  fire  and  flame  in  admira- 
tion, and  the  story  of  his  relations  with  it,s 
author  is  one  of  the  more  amusing  bits  of 
the  literary  gossip  of  the  last  century. 
That  he  should  have  been  delighted  with 
the  poem  explains  itself  without  difiiculty; 
for  it  at  once  justified  the  position  he  had 
taken  in  criticism;  it  was  another  tribute  to 
the  greatness  of  Milton,  and  a  proof  that 
his  own  abstract  theories  bore  the  test  of 
practical  experiment.  In  Gottsched's  eyes 
the  poem  was  an  abomination;  for  it  tore 
to  pieces  the  tottering  fabric  that  he  had 


90  FKOM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

built  with  80  much  care.  In  his  wrath  he 
picked  up  a  stray  heroic  poem,  von  Schon- 
aich's  "Hermann,"  that  was  written  by  * 
one  of  his  admirers,  and  did  his  best  with 
this  new  weapon  to  drive  the  pretender 
from  the  field;  but  his  efforts  wei'c  vain, 
and  only  made  the  poor  man's  failure  as  a 
dictator  more  ridiculous.  If  this  ill-fated 
"Hermann"  was  always  unreadable,  the 
once  more  fortunate  "  Messias "  has  now 
certainly  become  so;  but  the  poem  holds  a 
position  in  the  history  of  literature  which 
saves  it  from  obscurity.  We  see  in  it  many 
signs  of  the  new  spirit;  for,  while  it  drew 
much  of  its  inspiration  from  Milton,  this 
influence  Avas  largely  diluted  with  more 
modern  tears.  As  Coleridge  said  of  him, 
Klopstock  was  a  very  German  Milton ;  and, 
in  place  of  a  strong  handling  of  a  vast  sub- 
ject, we  have  the  emotions  that  the  subject 
is  capable  of  calling  forth,  but  nothing  else. 
His  enthusiasm  evaporated  in  sighs.  When 
he  comes  to  describing  anything  that  calls 


FROM   OPITZ    TO    LESSING.  91 

for  a  vivid  statement  of  his  own,  he  tells  us 
that  the  incident  is  ineffable,  inexpressible, 
and  he  declines  to  say  more  about  it.  These 
are  literary  objections,  and  in  no  way  touch 
the  importance  of  the  poem  as  an  expres- 
sion of  the  diffused,  if  not  deep,  religious 
sentiment  of  the  time.  We  will  readily 
recall  the  existence  of  the  same  feeling  in 
England;  and  Young's  " ^ight  Thoughts," 
Blair's  "Grave,"  and  Hervey's  "Medita- 
tions" all  bear  witness  to  its  importance. 
Yet  there  is  a  great  difference  to  be  noticed 
between  the  dominant  emotions  in  the  two 
countries  under  similar  religious  excitement. 
While  the  English  mainly  contemplated 
the  grave  and  its  horrors,  the  Germans  en- 
joyed a  tearful  ecstacy.  Young  and  Blair 
are  more  truly  degenerate  descendants  of 
Milton,  —  of  a  Milton  trimmed  to  the  cool 
requirements  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Klopstock,  on  the  other  hand,  is  full  of 
many  of  the  qualities  which  are  at  once  ap- 
parent in  the  full  glory  of  German  litera- 


92  FROM   OPITZ    TO    LESSIXG. 

ture  in  its  speedy  development.  He  was 
at  least  enthnsiastic,  even  if  we  may  not 
share  his  enthusiasm;  they  were  cold  and 
academic.  They  brought  to  an  end  the  tra- 
ditions of  Milton,  although  his  blank  verse 
survived  in  many  didactic  poems;  but  in 
Germany,  as  Hettner  has  well  said,  the 
"  Messiah  "  brought  salvation.  The  hex- 
ameter, in  which  measure  the  poem  was 
written,  became  a  common  form  in  the  later 
and  more  skilful  hands  of  Voss  and 
Goethe;  yet  this  is  the  slightest  of  his  ser- 
vices, —  one,  it  may  be  added,  that  had  its 
origin  in  Bodmer's  advice,  which  had  also 
been  given  by  Gottsched  a  few  years 
earlier.  This  fervent  use  of  language  was  a 
complete  change  from  the  tepid  correctness 
that  had  been  the  aim  of  his  predecessors, 
and  continued  to  be  that  of  some  of  his 
contemporaries.  When,  in  his  odes,  he 
broke  loose  from  rhyme  and  tried  to  write 
in  the  measures  of  the  Greek  and  Roman 
classics,  he  went  further  than  the  Germans 


FROM    OPITZ    TO    LESSING.  93 

have  agreed  to  follow  him;  but  he  at  least 
destroyed  the  omnipotence  of  the  rigidity\\ 
that  had  previously  ruled.  It  is  to  be  no- 
ticed too,  that,  while  Klopstock's  earliest 
nnrhymed  odes  bear  the  date  of  1747,  that 
in  the  same  year  Collins's  "  Odes  "  were 
first  published,  containing  the  beautiful  nn- 
rhymed "  Ode  to  Evening."  ^  But  Collins 
sang  to  deaf  ears,  while  Klopstock  was  not 
only  followed  by  a  swarm  of  short-lived 
imitators,  but  also  had  considerable  influ- 
ence on  many  of  the  most  illustrious  of  his 
followers.  Just  as  a  lightly  laden,  easily 
handled  craft  will  go  about  sooner  than  a 
huge  ship,  so  did  Germany  precede  England 
in  preparation  for  the  coming  change. 
The  bulk  of  English  didactic  poetry  gave 
the  literature  of  that  country  more  head- 
way.    But  its   new   rival   found  in  Klop- 

1  Of  course  it  is  not  meant  that  Klopstock  was  the  first  to 
adopt  this  form;  he  was  preceded,  for  example,  by  Pyra 
and  Lange,  just  as  there  were  unrhynied  IToratian  odes  in 
English  between  Milton  and  Collins,  e.  g.,  S.  Say's  Poems, 
p.  79,  where  may  bo  found  one  written  in  1720. 


94  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSIN^G. 

stock's  verse  an  ally  in  its  struggle  to  better 
things.  In  the  first  place,  the  "  Messias  " 
was  a  hopeful  poem;  while  the  English 
religious  poems  sang  solely  the  gloomy  hor- 
rors of  the  unfruitful  grave.  To  be  sure, 
this  was  lit  by  the  dim  light  of  the  moon; 
but  it  was  the  waning,  late-rising  moon  that, 
after  dimly  illuminating  the  romantic  novels 
of  Mrs.  Radcliffe  and  her  fellow-workers, 
set  in  the  wild  extravagance  of  now 
forgotten  tragedies  like  "  Bertram,"  which 
is  only  given  a  taste  of  immortality  by 
Coleridge's  denunciation  of  it.  Klopstock 
sang  with  unfamiliar  fervour  of  love  and 
friendship;  Bodmer  even  said  of  his  ode, 
"  Die  Braut,"  that  it  might  have  been  writ- 
ten by  the  Messiah  himself,  had  he  ever 
been  in  love!  But  Bodmer  often  allowed 
himself  strange  expressions.  Wliat  Klop- 
stock did  was  to  introduce  into  German 
literature  the  gracious  way  of  writing  about 
women,  which  had  for  a  long  time  been 
absent.     He  sang  of  love  as  a  sentiment, 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  95 

and  of  friendship  as  a  sentiment,  and,  it 
may  be  added,  of  love  of  nature  as  a  sen- 
timent. Some  of  these  quahties  it  is  possible 
to  detect  —  in  a  crude  state,  to  be  sure  — 
in  what  we  know  of  Bodmer,  whose  enthu- 
siasms foreboded  what  Klopstock  was 
about  to  accomplish.  Indeed,  the  Swiss 
critic's  life  is  full  of  the  quality  that  Klop- 
stock knew  better  as  material  for  poetry 
than  as  a  rule  of  conduct.  This  is  proved 
by  his  enthusiasm,  when  a  man  of  fifty, 
over  the  young  poet,  who  preferred  flirt- 
ing with  the  young  women  of  Zurich,  and 
drinking  with  the  young  men,  to  study- 
ing Switzerland,  and  serious  devotion  to 
writing.  When  Bodmer  wanted  to  show 
Klopstock  the  distant  beauties  of  the  Alps 
through  a  spy-glass,  he  lamented  that  the 
younger  poet  preferred  to  turn  the  spy- 
glass toward  the  windows  of  Zurich.  Yet 
this  is  not  the  first  time  or  the  last  that 
there  has  been  discord  between  young  men 
and  old  men,  and  on  this  subject;  or  that  a 


96  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

poet's  life  has  not  borne  out  all  that  his 
verses  seemed  to  indicate.  The  general 
sentimentality  of  Klopstock's  poems  found 
many  ready  to  condemn  it,  but  more  who 
were  disposed  to  accept  it;  for,  with  the 
decay  of  reasonableness  as  the  inspiration 
of  poetry,  human  nature  once  more  asserted 
itself,  and  gave  full  expression  to  emotions 
that  had  been  temporarily  ousted  from  liter- 
ature, and,  doubtless,  to  some  extent,  from 
life;  for  our  inclinations  and  habits  are 
modified  by  the  ideals  that  we  find  in  books, 
which  themselves  describe  what  their 
writers  see  about  them.  It  is  scarcely  ac- 
curate to  speak  of  this  sensibility  as  a  new 
thing,  as  is  often  done.  It  has  been  more 
than  half  hidden  by  the  civilization  of  the 
period  just  disappearing;  but,  in  the  re- 
moter past  of  the  heroic  novel,  tears  had 
been  as  frequent  a  pleasure  to  the  noble 
lords  and  ladies  who  lived  in  that  fairyland, 
as  they  were  destined  to  be  in  the  age  just 
begimiing.    The  merest  glance  at  the  heroic 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  97 

novels  will  confirm  this  statement,  and  in 
the  heroic  plays  we  find  equal  sensibility; 
although  in  these,  at  least  in  the  English 
ones,  there  is  often  a  hj-steric  roar  which 
hides  the  susceptibility  to  tears.^  In  the 
letters  of  Klopstock  and  of  his  contempo- 
raries we  find  abundant  traces  of  this  long- 
suppressed,  emotional  sensitiveness.  It 
had,  however,  all  the  charm,  and,  besides 
the  charm,  the  crudity  of  novelty.  The 
religious  epic,  which  was  a  remote  outwork 
from  Milton's  greater  work,  and  the  poetical 
expression  of  the  pietism  that  had  long 
existed  in  Germany,  reached  its  culmination 
here,  and  soon  ceased  to  be  a  tempting 
ideal  for  a  generation  that  was  learning  to 
disregard  religion.  In  other  ways  Klop- 
stock was  pointing  out  the  future  course  of 
thought.     He  soon  became  enthusiastic  for 

1  This  is  well  brought  out  in  Fournel's  "La  Littdniture 
Independante  et  les  iSci'ivains  oubli^s  an  XVII.""  siccle," 
chaps.  IV.  and  V.  He  makes  it  very  clear  that  sensibility 
cannot  be  derived  from  !Mmc.  de  Lafayette's  "  Princesse  de 
Cleves,"  as  some  have  thought. 


98  FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

Teutonic  subjects;  and  in  his  odes,  in 
which  the  early  German  deities  took  the 
place  of  those  of  Greece  and  Rome,  he  was 
breaking  the  bonds  of  pseudo-classicism,  as 
well  as  encouraging  the  patriotism  which, 
throughout  Europe,  was  destined  to  take 
the  place  of  the  cosmopolitanism  that  was 
growing  up  under  the  influence  of  a  monot- 
onous literary  culture.  Indeed,  the  culti- 
vation that  was  formed  on  Roman  models 
carried  with  it  the  imperium  Romanum  in 
literature.  It  rested  on  a  widespread  and 
generally  accepted  basis  of  common  knowl- 
edge, with,  one  might  almost  say,  a  common 
language  at  its  command;  for  in  Spain,  as 
in  Russia,  Cupid's  shafts,Yulcan's  lameness, 
Minerva's  wisdom,  everywhere  brought 
the  same  images  to  those  who  were  contin- 
ually reading  about  them.  Then  the  forms 
of  verse  were  alike  throughout  all  the 
countries  of  Europe.  The  satires  rever- 
berated from  one  end  of  it  to  the  other. 
The  softer  elegies,  the  didactic  poems,  the 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSTNG.  99 

epigrams,  sounded  gentler  but  no  less  fre- 
quent notes.  It  was  as  if  one  language 
was  spoken  in  many  dialects.  That  the 
French  should  have  been  the  most  stren- 
uous supporters  of  this  cosmopolitanism 
will  not  surprise  us.  These  new  tendencies 
in  literature  derived  their  main  authority 
from  France,  where  the  national  life  had  the 
least  representation  in  literature,  as  in  poli- 
tics ;  and  where,  too,  the  national  character- 
istics were  those  most  prominent  in  this 
literary  method,  such  as  concinnity  and 
directness.  The  French  zeal  for  cosmo- 
politanism, which  implied  taking  France 
for  a  model,  was  like  Heine's  definition 
of  the  French  nation  of  equality,  —  every 
man  wanted  his  superiors  brought  down 
to  his  level.  Every  rebellion  against  the 
rigid  laws  of  pseudo-classicism  was  a 
serious  matter,  and,  whenever  it  broke 
out,  it  found  its  sole  support  in  an  ap- 
peal to  some  of  the  national  distinctions. 
It  may  not  be  fanciful,  however,  to  conjee- 


100  FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

ture  that  the  Protestant  epics  had  been 
attempts  in  the  same  direction.  Du  Bartas, 
in  France,  with  his  "Semaine,"  may  be 
acquitted  of  overt  rebellion,  because  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  classics  had  not  been 
firmly  established  in  his  time.  But  Milton, 
with  his  blank  verse  and  grand  stj^e,  had 
stood  forth  in  opposition  to  the  admired 
couplet  and  colourless  verse  that  were 
fastening  themselves  on  English  poetry,  as 
Addison  saw  when  he  praised  him,  to  the 
discomfiture  of  the  unreasonable  lovers  of 
reasonable  verse. 

Yet  Klopstock's  patriotism  was  at  first 
simple  enough,  reminding  us  as  it  does  of 
the  Americanism  of  these  poets  who  for 
castles  write  ivigwams,  and  for  nightin- 
gales, mocTcinghirds.  There  was  no  Ger- 
many to  inspire  the  feeling  of  patriotism, 
but  merely  a  congeries  of  rival  States 
speaking  the  German  tongue ;  yet  the  feel- 
ing that  was  going  to  cast  these  separate 
atoms  into  a  coherent  whole  began  to  make 


FROM   OPITZ    TO    LESSINO.  101 

itself  felt  in  this  early  patriotism.  Let  us 
notice  one  thing  about  it,  which  may  sim- 
plify for  us  the  study  of  literature,  and  of 
much  else;  and  that  is,  that  the  way  in  which 
every  new  interest  of  the  human  mind  first 
makes  its  appearance  is  as  the  merest  senti- 
ment. This  may  seem  an  absolute  plati- 
tude; but,  if  we  examine  a  moment,  it  may 
help  to  explain  some  difficulties.  And  by 
sentiment  I  mean  what  we  call  sentimen- 
tality, which  may  always  be  taken  to  sig- 
nify a  sentiment  that  in  time  arouses  our 
distaste.  If  we  seek  for  a  few  examples  or 
tests,  we  shall  find  the  rudimentary,  crude 
feeling  in  the  dim  hatred  of  oppression, 
which,  after  lying  inert  in  the  hands  of  the 
sentimentalists,  crystallizes  into  action  in 
the  hands  of  energetic  men.  The  course  of 
the  Abolitionists  may  prove  this:  after 
years  of  agitation,  declamation,  and  denun- 
ciation, the  feeling  which  was  first  the 
exclusive  property  of  sentimentalists  and 
the  detestation  of  practical  men  became  a 


102  FROM    OPITZ    TO    LESSING. 

part  of  law,  and  the  property  of  men  who 
pride  themselves  on  hatred  of  sentimen- 
tality. In  the  matters  more  immediately 
before  us  we  see  the  crude  feeling  for 
nature,  and  apparently  idle  opposition  to 
the  classes  of  reasonable  poetry,  in  Brockes, 
which  only  later  became  a  fixed  principle, 
just  as  in  Poussin  and  Claude  Lorraine  we 
see  the  mountains  figuring  as  ornaments  of 
the  backgi'ound,  awaiting  the  time  when 
they  were  to  be  regarded  as  themselves 
objects  of  interest.  In  the  works  of  these 
early  painters,  as  Lotheissen  has  well  said,^ 
we  find  represented  the  scenery  of  the  fash- 
ionable Arcadias  and  shepherd-romances 
which  supplied  the  raw  material  that  was 
afterwards  to  develop  into  the  love  of 
nature.  Another  example  is  the  horror  of 
the  romances,  beginning  with  the  "Castle 
of  Otranto,"  that  was  to  appear  as  a  greater 
indulgence  in  vague  mental  emotion,  and  to 

'  Geschichte   dcr    franzozischen    Literatur   im   XVII.'" 
Jahrhundort.    III.,  3G8  ff. 


FROM    OriTZ    TO   LESSING.  103 

become  a  prominent  quality  in  subsequent 
literature.  In  the  same  way  we  perceive  in 
Klopstock's  zeal  for  the  remote  past  of 
Germany  the  early  buddings  of  the  ro- 
mantic revival. 


CHAPTER  lY. 

In  Wieland,  on  the  other  hand,  we  see 
another  and  very  different  part  of  the  same 
movement  making  its  appearance ;  whereas 
Klopstock,  in  his  ''Messias,"  sang  rather  an 
exalted,  vague  elevation  of  the  soul,  than 
any  definite  cosmogony  of  heaven,  and,  in 
his  celebration  of  the  early  history  of  Ger- 
many, he  wrote  with  an  unreality  that  seems 
to  us  confusing.  He  nevertheless  helped 
to  bring  to  notice  what  was  then  a  wilder- 
ness, but  in  time  became  a  familiar  region. 
Wieland,  who  began  by  following  in 
Klopstock's  footprints  and  composed  re- 
ligious poems,  afterwards  became  famous 
as  the  leader  of  some  of  the  innovations  of 
French  and  English  taste.  Klopstock's 
followers  lived  in  cloudland,  and  imagined 
themselves  great  geniuses   on  account  of 

104 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  105 

the  facility  with  which  they  imitated  the 
most  obvious  faults  of  the  illustrious  model. 
Wieland,  detestiug  their  obscurity  and  ex- 
travagance, devoted  himself  to  glorifying 
terrestial  grace  and  charm.  His  early  re- 
ligiosity, when  he  had  once  recovered  from 
it,  left  behind  nothing  but  the  familiar 
mortification  for  an  exploded  enthusiasm. 
From  singing  Platonic  love  he  turned  to 
singing  emotions  that  were  anything  but 
platonic.  Germany  appeared  to  be  turning 
into  a  land  where  the  full  moon  lit  lonely 
graves,  on  which  sat  weeping  figures, 
mourning  only  that  they  were  not  yet  real 
spectres.  He  filled  the  stage  with  a  band 
of  revellers,,  whose  sole  delight  in  moon- 
light was  that  it  did  not  betray  half  of  their 
frivolities,  and  who  made  the  most  of  the 
life  they  had.  He  belonged,  indeed,  to 
those  men  who,  in  France  and  England, 
devoted  themselves  to  singing  the  joys  of 
the  present;  who  learned  from  the  current 
philosophy    enough     scepticism    to    doubt 


106  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSIXO. 

everything  but  their  own  perception  of  the 
moment.  The  age  was  speeding  towards 
the  great  Kevolution,  while  Wicland  was 
maintaining  that  men  neglected  their  capa- 
city for  material  enjoyment.  Yet  his  work 
was  of  service,  because  it  tended  to  make 
reality  important,  and  to  dispel  the  mists  of 
wild  enthusiasm.  He  was  much  admired  in 
his  day,  although  now  he  pays  for  his 
ancient  fame  by  persistent  neglect.  Pos- 
sibly a  good  part  of  the  fame  that  he  got 
came  from  a  feeling  of  gratitude  among  the 
Germans  for  his  success  in  polishing  the 
language,  —  in  giving  it  an  unwonted  grace, 
—  and  for  proving  that  the  Germans  were 
not  really  what  they  had  long  been  sup- 
posed to  be,  —  a  clumsy  race.  The  fact 
that  he  had  done  this  gave  him  what  to 
foreigners  may  seem  like  undue  promi- 
nence. He  becomes  historically  important; 
but  we  are  ready  to  leave  untouched  his 
work,  which  is  made  up  of  inspirations 
drawn  from  the  French,  the  English,  the 


FROM   OPITZ   TO  LESSING.  107 

Italians,  and  the  later  Greek  writers.  Yet, 
besides  the  undoubted  charm  of  much  that 
he  wrote,  we  must  remember  that  he  stood 
forth  as  the  representative  of  one  of  the 
great  currents  of  thought  that  existed 
throughout  Europe  before  the  Revolution. 
So  much  at  least  is  true,  that,  if  we  include 
his  whole  life,  he  followed  many  currents; 
but  he  is  interesting,  as  an  example  of  the 
complete  civilization  which  had  no  sooner 
established  itself  than  it  was  overthrown, 
—  as  absolutism  always  must  be  over- 
thrown, so  long  as  man  is  a  growing  crea- 
ture. The  crowning  point  of  the  civiliza- 
tion of  the  last  century  was  a  being  without 
prejudices,  who  believed  only  what  he  saw, 
and  for  whom  what  he  did  not  see  was  a 
chaos  as  dark  as  Central  Africa  was  in  the 
old  atlases.  Grace,  ease,  civilization,  — 
for  that  sense  of  the  word  survives,  al- 
though the  fact  is  gone,  and  words,  being 
born  later,  live  longer  than  the  facts, — 
all  combined  to  make  the  last  half  of  the 


108  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSII^G. 

eighteenth  century  one  of  those  periods 
when  perfection  shone  in  this  dull,  clumsy, 
stupid  world;  and  we  turn  back  to  it  with 
that  feeling  which  we  always  have  for  pei*- 
fection,  whether  it  be  shown  in  strength, 
or  pathos,  or  charm;  whether  in  villainy 
or  virtue,  so  long  as  it  is  our  neighbor 
who  suffers  and  not  ourselves.  It  was  then 
that  the  cultivation  of  the  Renaissance  cul- 
minated; the  real  etymological  meaning 
of  the  word,  the  new  birth,  foretold  its 
fate;  Rome  had  been  born  again;  it  had 
flourished  with  its  dependence  on  remote 
ideals;  it  had  become  the  property  of 
scholars;  it  had  made  a  schism  between  the 
real  life  of  peoj^le  and  their  way  of  appear- 
ing in  literature,  —  exactly  the  same  differ- 
ence as  there  is  in  English  between  the 
Latin  and  what  we  are  accustomed  to  call 
the  Anglo-Saxon  words  of  our  vocabulary ; 
and,  after  it  had  tamed  and  civilized  men 
for  two  hundred  and  fifty  years,  we  saw 
the  result  at  the  end  of  the  last  century,  in 


FKOM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  109 

the  aversion  to  confusion,  enthusiasm, 
and  everything  inexplicable.  On  one  side 
stood  life,  with  all  its  charm;  there  was 
no  confusion, — the  understanding  appeared 
to  have  settled  everything.  To  be  sure, 
there  were  suffering,  ignorance,  misery;  but 
for  the  lucky  ones  who  had  won  the  prizes 
in  the  lottery  there  was  no  unpleasant 
feeling  of  duty  to  disturb  their  enjoyment. 
On  the  other  side  were  fanatics,  enthusiasts, 
discontented  with  the  current  neat  solu- 
tion of  the  universe,  who  indulged  in  ob- 
viously foolish  longings  and  refused  to 
listen  to  the  voice  of  reason;  yet,  after  all, 
the  grumbler  is  the  man  of  the  future, 
though  odious  in  the  present. 

All  of  this  polished  materialism  Wieland 
expressed  very  neatly,  as  it  was  expressed  by 
Voltaire  and  by  hosts  of  forgotten  writers 
in  France  and  by  a  certain  number  in  Eng- 
land, whose  ears  were  too  deaf  to  hear  the 
premonitory  mutterings  of  change.  They 
broke  away  from  pedantry  and,  as  it  were, 


110  FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSIKG. 

walked  on  their  own  legs  without  the  aid  of 
crutches;  they  abandoned  all  prejudices,  and 
took  men  as  they  found  them ;  they  had  the 
art  of  saying  things  gracefully:  it  was  only 
the  men  who  were  full  of  the  future  who 
stammered  and  bungled.  Sterne,  in  Eng- 
land, represents  the  unpedantic  writers  of 
the  new  time,  who  had  acquired  a  Gallic 
grace,  and,  with  the  grace,  some  of  the 
Gallic  frivolity.  Wieland,  too,  showed  how 
even  Germans  could  give  lessons  in  worldly 
wisdom,  and  his  fame  was  at  once  made. 

To  understand  just  what  that  civilization 
meant  is  not  perfectly  simple;  but  Wieland 
throws  a  light  upon  it.  Like  most  writ- 
ers, he  cannot  be  exactly  defined  by  even 
the  most  careful  adjectives  of  praise  or 
blame.  Censure  or  approbation  are  equally 
far  from  expressing  his  importance  and 
from  conveying  a  clear  notion  of  the  precise 
place  that  he  occupied.  The  mere  shifting 
of  popular  taste,  with  regard  to  his  work, 
will  make  this  statement  clear.     In  the  last 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  Ill 

century  we  should  have  heard  nothing  but 
rapturous  admh'ation;  and  it  is  not  merely 
a  difference  in  presidents  that  makes  it  un- 
likely that  any  one  now  holding  that  office 
should  again  translate  his  "  Oberon,"  as  John 
Quincy  Adams  did.  The  difference  is  in 
ourselves,  and  in  the  progress  of  literature, 
which  has  absorbed  many  influences  besides 
the  one  Wieland  represented,  and  cannot 
linger  by  his  contribution  to  the  total  work. 
Whether  we  like  it  or  not,  his  work  is 
there,  and  it  is  deserving  of  consideration. 
This  will  show  us  that  a  good  part  of 
Wieland's  service  to  letters  lay  in  breaking 
ground  for  freedom  in  art.  We  saw  how 
Broekes  expressed  the  new  found  delight 
in  nature,  with  what  keen  joy  he  expressed 
his  rapture  over  the  delicate  whiteness  of 
the  new  cherry  blossoms;  and  to  many, 
doubtless,  his  exultation  appeared  like  most 
complete  triviality;  yet  he  was  uttering 
a  new  truth,  that  the  world  was  in  itself 
beautiful,   and   that   the   eye   of  man   was 


112  JFKOM    OPITZ    TO   LESSII^^G. 

capable  of  other  pleasures  than  reading 
about  the  chess-play  of  various  intellectual 
interests.  When  we  remember,  however, 
that  his  enjoyment  of  this  innocent  specta- 
cle only  led  him  up  to  amazement  at  the 
undoubted  superiority  of  celestial  joys,  we 
ehall  see  that  he  was  poisoned  by  the  moral 
bias,  like  all  of  us  moderns,  who  are  in- 
capable of  enjoying  beauty  without  pond- 
ering on  the  associations,  chiefly  of  a 
didactic  kind,  that  it  may  call  up  within  us. 
Every  new  aspect  had  to  be  recommended 
as  a  moral  teacher.  We  still  know  the 
necessity  of  this ;  we  are  still  aware  that  a 
thing  which  is  beautiful  has  to  be  excused 
or  apologized  for,  or  palliated,  —  shuffled 
in,  after  some  fashion,  as  good  for  our 
morals.  Our  insistance  on  this  secondary 
end  is  the  reason  why  men  who  wish  to  be 
honest  so  often  take  great  pains  to  be  im- 
moral. They  are  disgusted  with  our  insin- 
cerity, and  exaggerate  the  grim  horror  of 
the  truth. 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSrN'G.  113 

What  Wieland  did  was  to  attempt  part 
of  the  general  regeneration  of  man  from  the 
burthen  of  authority.  Brockes  peeped  at 
the  truth ;  Wieland  expressed  it  ripened  and 
enlarged.  Brockes,  we  remember,  sang  of 
the  comfort  of  stretching  in  bed;  Wieland 
tried  to  point  out  how  man  was  not  a 
merely  intellectual  creature,  but  that  every 
emotion  of  which  he  was  capable  was  re- 
quired for  the  perfect  man.  He  detested 
the  dreamy  vagueness  of  his  contempo- 
raries, and  had  a  clearly-defined  intellectual 
perception  that  beauty  had  been  expelled 
by  teaching;  and  he  found  no  delight  in 
seeking  for  it  in  the  fantastic  shapes  of  the 
clouds;  he  called  for  concrete  enjoyment. 
It  was  the  narrowness  of  his  ideal  that  in- 
jured him.  The  material  philosophy  of 
"  let  us  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry,"  overlooks 
the  remorse  and  regret  of  satiety  which 
goes  to  the  debit  account,  and  has  to  be 
considered  by  one  who  is  at  all  wise;  yet 
it  has  done  good  work  by  advancing  the 


114  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

claims  of  one  side  of  long-starved  human 
nature,  —  a  complex  thing,  —  and  thus  con- 
tributing to  the  general  discussion  of  how 
man  shall  grow,  the  fact  that  it  is  not  by  the 
intellect  alone,  or  by  the  emotions  alone; 
while  these  two  elements  take  good  care  to 
prove  that  it  is  not  by  material  pleasures 
alone.  A  number  of  complicated  influences 
fed  the  romantic  revival,  which  was  really 
an  assertion  of  man's  individuality;  and  it 
is  only  gradually  that  we  are  learning  that 
they  are  found  in  every  human  being,  and 
not  in  imaginary  heroes  alone. 

"Wieland  had  detractors  and  rivals.  The 
literary  currents  were  growing  complicated 
as  they  were  in  England;  the  old  and  new 
were  meeting  and  producing  strange  re- 
sults. Two  of  these  were  important 
enough  to  demand  a  few  words.  Gessner 
(1730-87)  was  the  first  writer  of  German, 
of  modern  times,  who  received  the  honours 
of  translation  into  all  the  European  lan- 
guages.    He  looked    at   nature  as  he  had 


FROM   OPITZ    TO    LESSING.  115 

been  taught  to  do  by  Brockes  and  by 
Thomson,  and  he  drew  little  idyllic  pictures, 
in  which  we  nowadays  notice  especially  the 
frame  and  the  composition  rather  than  the 
vivid  representations  of  nature.  Yet,  in 
comparison  with  the  avowedly  ideal  per- 
sons in  the  old  Arcadian  romances,  these 
Greuze-like  figures  were  genuine,  and  their 
sentimentality  only  added  to  their  likeness 
to  the  life  about  them.  The  Arcadiana 
were  a  long-lived  race;  when  the  interest 
of  readers  lay  in  the  direction  of  lofty 
virtues,  the  romances  reflected  this;  now, 
when  arose  the  love  of  nature,  though  of 
nature  seen  through  streaming  eyes,  Gessner 
catered  to  it,  and  gave  in  a  complete  and 
finished  form  what  was  crude  in  the  trans- 
lation and  imitation  of  Ossian,  in  whom  the 
more  modern  feeling  of  nature  was  soon 
to  find  expression. 

In  Glcim's  military  songs  we  find  an- 
other division  of  the  new  spirit  seeking 
utterance.     They  were  patriotic  outbuists, 


116  FKOM   OPITZ   TO   LESSTJfG. 

iiispirfed  by  the  success  of  Frederick  the 
Great.  It  is  more  as  an  indication  of  the 
new  change  in  men's  hopes  and  interests, 
than  from  any  enormous  poetic  value,  that 
these  poems  are  important.  The  country 
was  awakening  from  the  poUtical  apathy 
that  kept  Hterature  a  thing  apart  from  Hfe 
and  a  matter  of  formal  interest.  Heal  feel- 
ing of  civil  life  was  showing  itself  after  a 
long  absence;  and  patriotism,  which  had 
fed  itself  on  the  romantic  antiquity  of  a 
really  unknown  past,  now  had  real  life  set 
before  it. 

Another  important  contribution  came 
from  the  VolTcslieder,  which  may  be  best 
studied  in  the  simple  record  of  the  Gottin- 
ger  "Hainbund;"  although,  since  every 
chronological  division  is  an  incomplete  one, 
it  carries  us  down  almost  further  than  we 
have  a  right  to  be  at  this  stage  of  our  con- 
sideration of  the  subject.  Yet  the  outburst 
which  we  are  about  to  study  occupies  an 
intermediate    place   between   the   raw   an- 


FKOM   OPITZ    TO    LESSING.  117 

tiquity  which  Klopstock  furthered  and  the 
later  study  of  mediaeval  history,  which  in 
many  forms  became  one  of  the  most  impor- 
tant decisions  of  the  Romantic  revival. 
Inasmuch  as  it  was  at  this  time  crude,  it 
may  fairly  be  examined  now,  when  our  at- 
tention is  turned  to  what  was  the  budding 
season  of  the  enthusiasm  that  was  soon  to 
burst  out  into  full  flower.  Certainly  it  is 
not  hard  to  perceive  qualities  that  are  gene- 
rally associated  with  the  name  of  Germany, 
in  what  we  find  in  these  letters  of  the  year 
1772.  Yoss,  for  example,  writes  thus  to 
Bruckner:  — 

You  ought  to  have  been  here  on  the  12th  of  Sep- 
tember !  The  two  Millers,  Ilahn,  Holty,  Wehrs,  and 
I  went  in  the  evening  to  a  neighbouring  village.  The 
moon  was  full.  We  gave  ourselves  up  to  the  unro- 
Btrainecl  enjoyment  of  the  beauties  of  nature.  We 
drank  milk  in  a  peasant's  hut,  and  then  walked  out 
into  the  open  fields.  Here  we  found  a  little  oak- 
grove  ;  and  it  at  once  occurred  to  us  all  to  swear 
friendship  beneath  these  sacred  trees.  We  set  wreaths 
of  oak-leaves  ai'ound  our  hats,  seized  one  another's 
hands,  danced  about  the  narrow  space,  called  to  the 
moon   and   stars  to  be   witnesses  of  our  union,  and 


118  FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

vowed  eternal  friendship.  Then  we  bound  ourselves 
to  the  most  complete  upriglitncss  in  our  judgments  of 
one  another,  and,  for  this  object  in  view,  to  celebrate 
our  usual  meetings  with  more  exactness  and  greater 
ceremony.  Every  one  of  us  is  to  write  a  poem  on 
that  evening,  and  we  are  to  renew  the  ceremony  every 
year. 

October  26,  he  writes :  — 

A  few  days  before  his  departure,  Ewald  invited  the 
whole  of  our  Parnassus  and  Btlrger  to  a  farewell  ban- 
quet. That  was  a  real  assemblage  of  jioets,  and  we 
all  revelled  like  Anacreon  and  Horace ;  Boie,  our 
Werdomar,  at  the  head  in  an  arm-chair;  on  both 
Bides  of  the  table  the  younger  bards  adorned  with 
oak-leaves.  Healths  were  drunk.  First  Klopstock'sl 
Boie  took  his  glass,  rose,  and  shouted,  "  Klopstock ! " 
Every  one  did  the  same,  uttered  the  great  name,  and, 
after  a  solemn  silence,  drank.  Then  Ramler's!  Not 
quite  so  solemnly.  Lessing's,  Gleini's,  Gessner's,  Ger- 
stenberg's,  Uz's,  Weisse's,  etc.,  then  my  Bruckner, 
with  his  Doris.  A  holy  shudder  must  have  seized 
them  when  the  whole  choir,  —  Hahn,  and  the  Millers, 
with  manly  German  throats ;  Boie  and  Burger,  with 
their  silver  voices,  and  the  rest  of  us,  —  shouted  the 
fiery  "  Lebe."  Burger  called  "  Wieland  !  Down  with 
Voltaire,"  etc.  Next  you  were  solemnly  chosen  a 
member.  The  oath  to  further  religion,  virtue,  sensi- 
bility, and  pure,  innocent  wit,  will  not  cost  you  much 
trouble;  and  the  object  of  our  society  —  to  aid  one 
another  by  mutual  criticism  —  you  can  assist  by  letter ; 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  119 

for  we   communicate  with  one   another  by  letter,  in 
order  to  secure  greater  freedom. 

One   or   two    additional   quotations   will 

dispel  any  lingering  doubts  with  regard  to 

their    abundant   enthusiasm.      Klopstock's 

birthday  was  thus  celebrated,  July  2,  1773 : 

Immediately  after  dinner  we  assembled  in  Hahn's 
room.  A  long  table  was  set  and  adorned  with  flowers. 
At  the  head  was  an  empty  arm-chair  covered  with 
roses  and  gilliflowers,  and  on  it  were  Klopstock's  com- 
plete works.  Under  the  chair  lay  Wieland's  "Idris" 
torn  into  fragments.  First,  Hahn  read  a  few  of  Klop- 
stock's odes  that  referred  to  Germany ;  then  we  drank 
coffee.  Our  pipe-lighters  were  made  out  of  Wieland's 
works.  Boie,  who  does  not  smoke,  had  to  light  one, 
»  and  stamp  on  the  fragments  of  the  "  Idris."  Then 
we  drank  in  Khine  wine  Klopstock's  health,  Luther's 
memory,  Hermann's,  the  health  of  the  "  Bund ;"  then 
Ebert's,  Goethe's  (don't  you  know  him  yet  ?),  Herder's, 
etc.  Then  the  talk  grew.  We  talked  about  freedom, 
with  our  hats  on  our  heads,  about  Germany,  virtue,  — 
and  you  can  imagine  how  we  talked!  Then  we  ate, 
drank  punch,  and  at  last  we  burned  Wieland's  "Idris" 
and  his  likeness. 

This  is  the  last:  — 

September  12  will  often  cost  me  tears.  It  was  the 
day  of  parting  from  the  Counts  Stolberg  and  their 
excellent  chamberlain  Clauswitz.  The  afternoon  and 
evening  were  tolerably  cheerful,   though   at  times  a 


120  FROM   OPITZ   TO  LESSING. 

trifle  quieter  than  usual.  In  some  we  detected  secret 
tears  of  the  lieart.  These  are  the  bitterest,  Ernes- 
tina,  —  bitterer  than  those  which  bedew  the  cheek. 
The  young  Count's  face  was  terrible ;  he  strove  to  be 
cheerful,  and  every  expression  was  melancholy.  .  .  . 
{Evening,  10  o'clock).  —  I  was  forced  to  play  on  the 
piano.  Perhaps  the  music  gave  the  others  some  alle- 
viation; but  in  me,  who  had  to  experience  every 
melting  effect  in  order  to  render  it  again,  it  inflicted 
only  deeper  wounds.  It  was  midnight  before  the 
Stolbergs  arrived.  But  who  can  describe  the  three 
terrible  hours  we  passed  together  in  the  night !  Every 
one  wanted  to  cheer  up  the  others,  and  hence  arose  a 
confusion  of  grief  and  simulated  joy  which  was 
like  madness.  We  had  punch  made,  for  the  night  was 
cold.  We  tried  to  dispel  our  gloom  by  singing,  and 
chose  Miller's  "  Abschiedslied."  Here  all  pretence 
was  vain.  Our  tears  welled  forth ;  our  voices  grad- 
ually failed  us.  We  asked  the  same  questions  ten 
times  over;  we  swore  eternal  friendship;  we  em- 
braced; we  sent  messages  to  Klopstock.  Then  it 
struck  three.  We  could  no  longer  restrain  our  agony ; 
we  tried  to  make  ourselves  more  wretched,  and  sang 
the  "Abschiedslied"  once  more,  and  sang  it  to  the 
end  with  difiiculty.  We  were  all  weeping  aloud. 
After  a  fearful  pause,  Clauswitz  arose,  "  Now,  my  chil- 
dren, the  time  has  come!"  I  flew  to  him,  and  I  do 
not  know  what  I  did.  Miller  drew  the  Count  to  the 
window  and  showed  him  a  star.  I  can't  go  on,  dear 
Ernestina;  my  tears  are  falling  anew.  When  Claus- 
witz let  me  go,  the  Counts  were  off.  It  was  the  most 
terrible  night  I  ever  knew. 


CHAPTEE  Y. 

Surely  letters  like  these  enable  one  to 
understand  the  mood  in  which  "Wcrther" 
was  written  and  read;  but  they  take  ns 
away  from  the  consideration  of  some  of  the 
earlier  incidents.  Lessing,  whose  health 
was  drunk  by  these  zealous  revellers,  has 
been  left  till  now,  in  order  that  the  total 
impression  of  his  fine  character  and  mo- 
mentous impulse  might  appear  in  one  dis- 
tinct whole.  We  shall  see  that  he  includes 
much  that  lies  dim  in  his  contemporaries, 
and  also  that  he,  like  every  one  else,  was  a 
man  of  his  time.  This  must  be  distinctly 
borne  in  mind,  not  to  the  discredit  of  Les- 
sing,  but  as  a  simple  historic  fact.  That 
quality  which  we  call  genius  it  may  at 
present  be    out    of  our  power   to   define. 

Yet    the    direction   in    which    this   genius 

121 


122  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSIKG. 

shall  find  expression,  the  errors  which  it 
shall  sweep  away,  as  well  as  those  which  it 
may  accept,  the  language  which  it  shall 
use,  are  as  inevitable  and  as  capable  of 
explanation  as  the  linguistic  or  grammatical 
peculiarities  which  shall  mark  a  writers 
style.  Just  as  an  author  must  use  the 
existing  vocabulary,  he  must  correct  or 
express  existing  errors  ;  and  he  is  bound 
by  the  limitations  of  humanity  as  to  the 
extent  to  which  he  may  be  able  to  advance 
beyond  the  starting-place.  What  he  does 
is  to  say  what  his  contemporaries  feel,  ris- 
ing above  them,  but  in  the  direction  in 
which  they  are  moving.  So  much,  at  least, 
we  are  justified  in  saying  of  Lessing  ;  and 
it  perhaps  deserves  saying  about  him,  be- 
cause sometimes  his  countr^'^men  have 
spoken  of  him  as  a  man  who  accomplished 
all  that  he  did  by  sheer  intellectual  force, 
without  any  relation  to  his  contempora- 
ries. 

If  we  trace  the  course  of  Lessing's  life 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  123 

and  action,  we  shall  see  that  he  started 
with  his  generation,  and  that  what  is  won- 
derful in  him  is  the  way  in  which  he  an- 
swered the  questions  that  naturally  arose 
as  literature  Avas  growing.  This  was  the 
difference  between  him  and  other  men,  that 
he  answered  the  questions  that  arose,  in- 
stead of  contenting  himself  with  the  obso- 
lete solutions  that  satisfied  his  contempora- 
ries, lie  was  born  in  1729 ;  and,  after  a  busy 
boyhood  and  youth,  in  which  he  equipped 
himself  very  well  for  the  discussion  of 
many  subjects,  he  began  his  literary  career 
at  a  very  early  age.  We  have  seen  that 
Gottsched,  who  was  then  at  the  height  of 
his  influence,  was  working  heartily  in  the 
direction  of  improving  the  German  stage; 
and  Lessing  soon  tried  his  hand  at  writing 
plays.  This  was  far  from  being  the  only 
employment  of  his  busy  pen.  He  not  only 
composed  poems,  but  he  criticised  the  work 
of  most  of  his  contemporaries;  and  there 
was  scarcely  a  single  department  of  thought 


124  FKOM    OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

in  which  he  did  not  interest  himself.* 
What  first  strikes  the  eye  in  running  over 
his  work  is  its  fragmentary  state.  Lessing 
and  Herder,  the  two  men  who  raised  Ger- 
man literature  from  provincialism  to  promi- 
nence, and,  one  may  almost  say  without 
exaggeration,  established  the  lines  on  which 
it  was  to  move,  have  this  quality  in  com- 
mon, that  their  work  is  in  a  fragmentary 
condition.  The  impulse  that  Herder  gave 
to  Germany,  and  through  Germany  to  the 
civilized  world,  —  for  by  his  time  that  coun- 
try  filled   its    own    boundaries,    and  every 

1  In  their  interesting  books  on  German  literature,  both 
Hinrichs  and  Gruclier  lay  a  great  deal  of  weight  on  the 
fact  that  the  literature  of  Germany  is  built  up  on  critical 
work.  This  is  true;  but  yet  it  is  well  to  I'emember  that 
the  large  amount  of  criticism  in  tliat  country  is  merely  a 
sign  of  widespread  interest  in  literature,  and  that  elsewhere 
copious  discussion  accompanies  creative  work.  Drj'den, 
for  example,  was  always  writing  about  the  proper  way  to 
write.  Woi'ds worth  and  Coleridge  defended  the  position 
they  and  their  contemiwraries  took  in  their  poems;  and  in 
France,  about  1830,  the  critical  warfare  was  quite  as  im- 
portant as  the  literature  it  illustrated  and  advocated. 
Everywhere  and  at  all  times  people  will  talk  about  subjects 
that  interest  them.  This  condition  is  far  from  being  pecu- 
liar to  Germany. 


FROM   OPITZ    TO  LESSING.  125 

impulse  that  it  received  affected  its  neigh- 
bours, —  was  due,  not  to  formal  books,  with 
a  beginning,  a  middle,  and  an  end,  but 
to  remarks  dropped  here  and  there,  that 
were  not  formal  developments  of  definite 
problems,  but  happy  statements  of  novel 
truths.  These  fell  on  rich  ground,  and  in- 
fluenced every  man,  just  as  Bible  texts 
console  the  pious,  who  do  not  weave  them 
into  an  intricate  system  of  theology.  The 
fragmentariness  of  what  he  said  and  of 
what  Lessing  said  does  not  appear  to  stand 
in  their  way.  After  all,  stammering  is  not 
a  quality  to  be  acquired  with  pains;  but  it 
is  better  to  stammer  out  the  truth  than  to 
utter  glibly  empty  platitudes;  and  when  we 
are  reminded,  of  this  or  that  writer,  that  his 
woi"k  represents  no  system,  it  may  be  fair 
to  pause  a  moment  before  being  over- 
whelmed, and  to  ask  what  in  the  past  is 
the  relative  value  of  the  men  with  systems, 
and  of  the  men  who  were  wise  enough  to 
see  that  a  system  of  the  universe  was  but 


126  FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

another  attempt  to  square  the  circle. 
Socrates  is  regarded  as  a  man  who  helped 
the  intellectual  growth  of  the  world  j  but 
the  Socratic  system  is  not  yet  known. 
Montaigne  has  some  reputation  as  a  thinker. 
Where  was  his  system?  Old  temples  are 
not  the  only  things  that  time  overthrows; 
and  of  Plato  —  of  every  man  who  aims  at 
the  solution  of  every  question  —  we  have 
left  much  dust,  and  a  greater  or  smaller  col- 
lection of  fragments  that  alone  move  the 
world.  Let  us,  then,  not  mourn  that  Les- 
sing's  swift  intelligence  made  the  selection 
of  what  should  be  given  to  the  world;  and 
if  for  Lessing  we  read  Emerson,  the  re- 
mark still  holds  good. 

In  Lessing's  case  the  fragmentariness  is 
sufficiently  explained  by  the  number  of  his 
interests  and  his  delight  in  controversy. 

The  fables  which  his  contemporaries  were 
writing,  with  a  complacent  belief  that  they 
were  filling  every  requisition  that  could  be 
made,   Lessing   also    wrote.      His  restless 


FEOM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  127 

energy  inspired  him  to  attempt  a  serious 
discussion  of  the  nature  of  the  fable,  in 
which  he  set  some  of  Breitinger's  false 
notions  right,  but  did  not  fairly  come  to  a 
ripe  conclusion.  Then,  too,  he  wrote  odes, 
epigrams,  and  indeed  all  the  accustomed 
little  poems  of  the  day,  and  with  such  suc- 
cess that  he  acquired  some  reputation  in 
foreign  parts;  but  no  one  knew  better  than 
himself  how  far  he  was  from  being  a  real 
poet.  His  own  lack  of  poetic  capacity  he 
was  never  tired  of  confessing.  Although 
he  wrote  three  plays  that  were  the  first  in 
Germany  to  deserve  a  place  in  literature,  — 
a  place  they  still  hold,  —  he  maintained  that 
he  was  no  dramatist.  He  knew,  what  pos- 
terity has  agreed  in  acknowledging,  that  his 
main  merit  was  as  a  critic.  It  is  of  the  utmost 
importance  to  know  Lessing's  plays,  but  it 
is  a  great  mistake  to  rest  contented  with 
that  knowledge,  and  not  to  study  his  critical 
writing.  To  be  sure,  much  of  this  has  be- 
come  old-fashioned;    many   of  the   points 


^         PROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 


which  he  took  up  are  now  permanently 
settled;  some  have  at  this  day  only  a  his- 
toric interest;  but  everything  that  Lessing 
wrote  impresses  on  our  minds  the  vision  of 
an  indefatigable  lover  of  truth,  who  refused 
to  take  commonplaces  for  granted,  and  was 
the  deadly  foe  of  pedantry  and  convention. 
These  were  always  his  animating  prhiciples, 
and  in  the  drama,  in  general  literature,  in 
archaeology  and  theology,  he  cleared  the 
ground  as  no  other  one  man  has  ever  done 
in  the  history  of  any  country. 

Let  us  examine  what  he  did  with  the 
drama  by  way  of  precept  and  example.  In 
Gottsched's  hands  the  stage  was  turned 
wholly  in  the  direction  of  the  lifeless  imita- 
tion of  French  models.  The  same  formal 
exactness  in  England  flourished  in  Addi- 
son's "  Cato,"  and  lingered  until  Johnson's 
"Irene."  Its  final  expulsion  from  that 
country  we  may  place  in  1756,  the  date  of 
his  preface  to  Shakespeare.  But  before 
Johnson    wrote   that   famous   preface,   the 


FROM  OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  129 

unities,  which  had  been  exotics  at  the 
best,  had  withered  and  fallen  after  bearing 
but  a  few  fruits,  as  juiceless  as  hot-house 
oranges.  In  France,  too,  the  change  was 
taking  place  in  the  dramatic  literature 
under  the  leadership  of  Diderot.  Lessing 
in  G-ermanj  fought  the  same  fight.  Since 
it  was  the  same  question,  the  conflict 
between  what  was  reputed  to  be  the  classic 
stage  and  what  is  commonly  called  the 
romantic,  that  was  agitating  these  three 
countries  simultaneously,  it  may  perhaps  be 
worth  our  while  to  examine  the  way  in 
which  independence  was  sought  in  each  one 
of  them.  In  fact,  not  only  is  this  the  most 
interesting  way  of  regarding  the  subject, 
but  it  is  distinctly  the  most  accurate,  for 
it  is  impossible  to  understand  what  Diderot 
and  Lessing  did  without  knowing  the  Eng- 
lish stage;  and,  more  than  this,  inasmuch 
as  waves  of  thought  know  geographical 
boundaries  as  little  as  the  waves  of  the  sea 
know  their  geographical  names,  the  contests 


130  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

that  were  waged  in  these  separate  countries 
were  all  parts  of  one  great  battle,  not  yet 
wholly  finished,  between  the  old  and  the 
new  —  between  the  Renaissance  and  roman- 
ticism. Just  as  in  a  real  battle,  the  soldier 
in  a  cornfield  does  not  know  very  clearly 
what  is  going  on  behind  a  neighbouring 
hill,  although  the  victory  of  the  line  at  that 
point  weakens  the  enemy  in  his  front,  so 
this  fight  was  fought  with  each  contestant 
seeing  most  clearly'  the  enemy  directly  in 
his  face,  ^ow,  however,  we  can  view  the 
whole  battle  as  it  raged  for  something  like 
a  century,  and  its  impoi-tance  gives  greater 
glory  to  Leasing,  who  was  the  ablest  gen- 
eral officer  in  the  field. 

The  classic  drama  first  fixed  itself  in 
France,  deriving  its  principles  fi'om  Italy, 
and  taking  the  place  of  the  crude  drama  of 
impossibilities  which  was  represented  by 
Hardy.  In  France  it  found  its  natural 
home,  and  from  there  it  spread  to  England 
arid   Germany.      In   England   the   French 


FROM   OPITZ    TO    LESSIXG.  131 

influence  was  slow  in  its  conquest  of 
modern  taste.  The  Puritans,  by  closing 
the  play-houses  in  1642,  had  broken  with 
the  past,  but  the  early  inspiration  was 
already  fairly  dead.  With  the  Restoration 
and  the  revival  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
as  well  as  in  the  work  of  the  new  writers 
who  had  not  forgotten  the  old  traditions, 
we  see  the  native  aversion  to  rules  holding 
out  for  a  long  time  against  accepting  many 
shackles  at  once.  Dryden's  indecision 
about  the  relative  merits  of  blank  verse 
and  poetry ;  his  comments  —  as  in  the 
famous  "  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy  "  —  on 
the  French  stage;  and,  more  than  anything 
else,  the  general  crudity  of  the  English 
heroic  drama,  with  its  excesses  and  extrav- 
agances, show  how  far  the  English  play- 
writers  Avere  from  imitating  the  French. 
The  stream  that  started  in  the  classic 
French  drama  met  another  and  a  very 
turbid  stream,  that  refused  to  flow  in 
bounds    until  Addison,   who   had   already 


132  FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSr>fG. 

laughed  at  the  heroic  plays,  let  his  "  Cato  " 
be  acted,  and  gave  tlie  authority  of  his 
name  to  the  most  rigid  formality.  Yet 
even  his  adherence  to  these  rules,  at  the 
very  time — it  is  curious  to  notice — when  he 
was  defending  Milton  and  beginning  the 
war  against  similar  artificiality  in  epic 
poetry,  inspired  but  few  imitators.  Rowe 
had  already,  in  a  crude  way,  gone  back  to 
Shakespeare,  and  a  few  years  later  Lillo,  in 
his  "  George  Barnwell,"  had  shown  that  a 
tragedy  did  not  demand  social  position  in 
its  main  characters.  Richardson  and  Lillo 
established  the  sway  of  the  family  novel  and 
the  domestic  tragedy,  and  their  eifect  was 
even  greater  on  the  continent  than  in  Eng- 
land, where  there  has  always  existed 
marked  intolerance  for  the  discussion  of 
general  principles.  Moreover,  in  England 
the  classic  plays  had  too  slight  a  hold  to 
need  much  exorcising.  They  vanished 
almost  before  they  had  become  firmly 
established.    In  France,  however,  they  were 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSrN^G.  133 

part  of  the  apparent  constitution  of  the 
universe,  and  the  attack  upon  them  required 
a  campaign  of  nearly  a  century  before  vic- 
tory was  won.  La  Motte,  a  writer  of  no 
great  merit,  opened  the  battle  with  an  attack 
on  the  writers,  pointing  out  that  the  unity 
of  place  made  it  necessary  to  lug  people 
into  strange  places,  whither  they  would  not 
have  gone  naturally,  and  asking  whether 
the  spectators,  who  knew  that  they  were  in 
the  theatre,  could  not  as  easily  imagine 
themselv^es  in  Athens  as  in  Rome  in  the 
course  of  a  single  play,  and  showing  that  in 
the  opera  the  variety  of  place  caused  no 
confnsion.^     He  attacked  the  unity  of  time 

^  To  show  how  the  unity  of  place  did  not  destroy  free- 
dom, the  Abbe  d'Aubignac,  in  his  "Pratique  du  Theatre" 
(Amsterdam  :  1725),  i.  90,  says  :  —  "  On  pourroit  feindre 
an  palais  sur  le  bord  de  la  mer  abandonnd  k  de  pauvres 
gens  de  la  compagne;  un  prince  arrivant  anx  cotes  par 
uaufrage,  qui  le  feroit  orner  de  riches  tapisserios,  lustres, 
bras  dorcz,  tableaux,  et  autres  meubles  precieux.  Aprfes 
on  y  feroit  raettre  en  feu  par  quelque  avanture,  et  le  faisant 
tomber  dans  rembrasement,  la  mer  paroitroit  derrievo  sur 
laquelle  on  ix>urroit  encore  ropresenter  un  combat  de  vais- 
seanx..  Si  bien  que  dans  cinq  changements  de  Theatre 
Tunit^  de  lieu  scroit  ingdnieuscment  gardce." 


134  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

with  the  same  useless  weapon,  good  sense, 
but  with  the  result  that  sensible  people  will 
expect,  —  he  became  an  object  of  ridicule. 
Voltaire,  especially,  turned  on  him  with  vio- 
lence, saying :  —  "  The  spectator  is  but  three 
hours  at  the  play,  consequently  the  acting 
must  last  only  three  hours.  Cinna,  Andro- 
maque,  Bajazet  last  no  longer.  If  a  few 
other  pieces  demand  more  time,  this  is  a 
license  which  is  only  pardonable  in  view  of 
the  beauty  of  the  work;  and  the  greater  the 
license,  the  greater  the  fault."  Marmontel, 
too,  frequently  advocated  a  change.  La 
Motte  recommended  tragedies  in  prose. 
Lachaussee  wrote  plays  in  prose  about  peo- 
ple in  common  life ;  the  seed  took  root,  and 
change  was  in  the  air. 

Among  the  inspiring  causes,  besides 
the  influence  of  the  English  stage*  and 
natural  distaste  ior  the   dwindling  glories 

*  The  Theatre  Anglais  (8  vols.)  appeared  between  1745 
and  1749.  The  first  four  volumes  were  almost  entirely 
devoted  to  Shakespeare. 


FKOM   OPITZ   TO  LESSING.  135 

of  the  classic  drama,  we  may  count  the 
new  influence  of  the  novel,  which,  by 
accustoming  the  reader  to  frequent  change 
of  scene,  helped  to  destroy  the  rigidity 
of  the  unity  of  place,  and  left  on  the 
reader  an  impression  of  the  advantage 
of  ])rose  for  the  expression  of  thought. 
It  also  showed  the  value  of  the  unconven- 
tional hero.  The  spectator  became  more 
aware  than  formerly  of  the  chains  which 
the  di\imatist  had  to  assume.  This  was  all 
l)art  of  the  general  disintegration  of  author- 
ity which  had  gone  to  the  making  of  the 
etiquette  of  literature  that  marked  the  es- 
tablishment of  pseudo-classicism.  There 
independence  was  opposed,  as  independence 
in  manners  is  always  opposed;  the  author- 
ities felt  averse  to  anyone  who  had  his  own 
views  of  literature,  as  one  feels  now  about 
those  who  do  not  comply  with  convention, 
but  have  manners  of  their  own.  The  same 
liberality  extended  itself,  also,  to  the  toler- 
ance of  translations  and  imitations.     At  the 


136  FKOM   OPITZ  TO   LESSIXG. 

time  of  which  we  are  now  speaking,  inde- 
pendence was  beginning  to  assert  itself, 
and  it  began  with  asking  for  freedom  of  the 
emotions. 

The  most  important  defender  of  the  new 
spirit  was  Diderot,  who  wrote  much  about 
the  stage,  urging  the  player  to  watch 
nature,  and  in  his  "  Paradox  "  affirming  that 
extreme  sensibility  makes  mediocre  actors; 
mediocre  sensibility,  bad  actors;  and  that 
an  absolute  lack  of  sensibility  makes 
actors  really  sublime.  He  condemned  ex- 
cessive gesture  and  emphasis,  and  praised 
realistic  scenery.  The  best  plays,  he  said, 
were  those  that  combined  tragedy  and  com- 
edy, and  he  tried  his  hand  at  composing 
plays  for  a  model  to  his  disciples.  What 
injured  both  his  precepts  and  his  practice 
was  his  insistence  on  the  need  of  moral 
teaching.  "  It  is  always  virtue  and  virtuous 
people  that  a  man  should  have  in  view  when 
writing.  Oh,  what  a  gain  it  would  be  for 
mankind  if  all  the  imitative  arts  should  pro- 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  137 

pose  one  common  object,  and  were  to  com- 
bine with  the  laws  in  making  us  love  virtue 
and  hate  vice !  "  This  was  an  old  error  that 
was  especially  prominent  in  the  last  cen- 
tury.  We  shall  come  across  it  in  Lessing, 
just  as  we  find  it  in  the  earliest  writers  on 
the  subject.^ 

What  especially  distinguishes  Lessing's 
work  about  the  stage  is  this,  that  he  fought 
almost  single-handed,  while  in  England  the 
change  of  the  drama  towards  simplicity  was 
but  one  part  of  a  general  effort  to  abandon 
an  artificial  system;  and  in  France  the 
movement  was  furthered  by  a  number  of 
fellow  -  workers.  The  condition  of  the 
theatre  in  Germany  when  Lessing  began  to 
write  was  most  lamentable,  and  those  who 
were  supplying  it  with  material  were  slav- 

*  D'Aubignac,  Op.  cit.  i.  5:  —  "La  principale  regie  du 
Ijoerae  d:*amatiqiie  est  que  les  vertns  y  soient  toujours 
reeonipensces  ou  pour  le  moins  y  soient  toujours  iouees, 
niulgre  les  outrages  de  la  Fortune  et  que  les  vices  y  soient 
toujours  punis  ou  jwur  le  moins  toujoui's  en  horreur  quand 
meme  ils  y  triomphent." 


138  FEOM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

ishly  devoted  to  the  utmost  rigor  of  the 
French  rules.  They  had  uo  admirable  past 
to  which  they  could  look  back;  for  the 
medisBval  glory  of  Cxcrmany  was  remoter 
than  the  civilization  of  Rome.  The  popular 
theatre  was  a  mass  of  vulgarities,  that  rep- 
resented only  the  degradation  of  the  popu- 
lace; and  the  absence  of  national  life  de- 
prived the  Germans  of  what  has  always 
been  the  strongest  inspiration  of  a  real 
drama.  Yet,  narrow  as  the  field  was,  it 
was  one  that  held  out  the  most  temptations 
to  young  writero.  The  more  they  tried, 
however,  the  more  evident  it  became  that 
the  French  taste,  which  was  the  natural 
expression  of  that  nation,  was  an  exotic  in 
the  less  civilized  Gei-many.  The  imported 
elegance  had  no  roots  in  the  nation,  and  it 
even  failed  to  satisfy  those  who,  like  Fred- 
erick the  Great,  preferred  to  get  the  French 
flavour  in  the  French  tongue.  We  have 
seen  that  Klo])stock  led  his  genei-ation  back 
to  a  remote  and  romantic  nationalism.     It 


FEOM    OPITZ   TO  LESSING.  139 

was  Lessing's  glory  that  he  brought  the 
drama  into  close  and  actual  relations  with 
human  life.  This  he  accomplished  in  two 
ways  —  by  criticism  and  by  his  own  original 
work.  From  the  beginning,  Lessing's  crit- 
icism of  Gottsched  was  unsparing.  What 
was  ridiculous  in  that  would-be  dictator  he 
lost  no  chance  to  ridicule;  and  this  he  did 
without  entering  the  camp  of  the  Swiss 
school.  Yet  he  began  with  the  intention, 
not  of  overthrowing  everything  that  the 
example  of  the  French  taught,  but  of 
widening  its  narrow  limits.  He  wrote  the 
beginnings  of  many  plays,  but  it  was  with 
the  "  Miss  Sara  Sampson "  (1755)  that  he 
first  appeared  as  a  dramatic  writer  of  any 
importance.  His  earlier  work  is  only  lit  up 
by  the  brilliancy  of  what  he  now  began  to 
do.  Of  itself  it  was  of  the  nature  of  school 
exercises.  Already  Lessing  had  studied 
the  discussion  that  was  going  on  in  France 
and  England  about  the  stage,  and  in  the 
very  title  of  this  play  we  see  its  descent 


140  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

from  the  English  domestic  drama.  This 
fact,  that  it  owed  its  origin  to  the  Uterature 
of  another  country,  is  but  one  of  the  many 
instances  of  the  futihty  of  looking  anywhere 
for  that  form  of  originality  which  to  the 
student  is  as  incomprehensible  as  a  sixth 
sense.  There  is  a  vague  notion  that  the 
mysterious  thing  called  genius  is  capable 
of  evoking  something  out  of  nothing  by 
direct  exercise  of  creative  power.  While 
this  idea  has  vanished  from  science,  it  still 
survives  in  those  departments  of  human 
activity  which  have  not  yet  come  fully 
under  scientific  treatment,  and  poets  and 
painters  enjoy  in  the  popular  estimation  a 
privilege  which  has  been  denied  to  nature. 
For  one  thing,  the  fact  that  the  Greek  and 
Roman  classics  came  down  to  us  only  in 
fragments — and  these  the  best — confirmed 
those  who  studied  only  those  two  literatures 
in  the  belief  that  the  great  works  of  the 
Greeks  were  the  result  of  a  sort  of  lucky 
chance,  and  that  the  Romans,  when  they 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  141 

wanted  a  tragedy,  or  comedy,  or  epic,  set  a 
8afe  fashion  by  sitting  down  and  copying 
their  predecessors.  They  had  no  better 
opportunity  to  observe  the  growth  of  Uter- 
atnre  than  has  the  hasty  traveller  who  stud- 
ies the  history  of  painting  in  the  Tribune 
of  the  Uffizi,  in  which  the  masterpieces  are 
crowded  together,  and  the  splendor  of 
human  achievement  strikes  the  dazed  and 
delighted  spectator  without  the  intrusion  of 
any  reminder  of  the  toil  by  which  it  was 
attained,  or  of  the  forgotten  failures  that 
make  it  clear  that  not  for  us  alone  is  suc- 
cess rare  and  difficult.  In  Greek  literature, 
especially,  we  have  only  the  mountain- 
peaks,  and  not  the  expanse  of  plain,  so  that 
we  cannot  draw  the  man  with  all  the  ful- 
ness that  is  possible  when  we  have  to  do 
with  modern  countries.  And,  too,  just  as 
Darwin  would  never  have  hit  upon  his 
theory  of  evolution  if  the  fauna  he  had 
seen  had  consisted  of  nothing  but  horses, 
cows,  elephants,  and  dogs,  so  it  would  have 


142  from:  opitz  to  lessixg. 

been  with  the  students  of  the  classics.  It  was 
the  blending  lines  of  the  pigeons  that  first 
led  him  to  observe  the  interchangeability  of 
species;  and  with  all  the  evidence  at  our 
command  in  modern  literature,  we  detect 
the  wonderful  connection  between  the  writ- 
ings of  different  countries.  The  growth  of 
the  bourgeoisie  in  England  was  the  inspiring 
cause  of  the  family  novel  and  the  domestic 
drama.  This  advance  in  civilization  spread 
to  other  countries,  and  with  the  same  results. 
The  English  and  German  imitations  of  the 
"Spectator"  carried  the  new  feeling,  which 
was  furthered  by  the  study  of  nature ;  and 
to  the  eye  of  science  there  is  no  material 
difference  between  a  king  and  a  peasant  — 
or  at  least  since  all  discoveries  are  gradual 
— between  a  king  and  a  respectable  citizen. 
Love  of  the  peasant  was  still  a  sentimental 
wealniess,  and,  we  may  say,  yet  awaits  the 
time  when  the  peasant  shall  discover  his 
own  importance.  The  exaggerated  insist- 
ence on  purely  national  traits  was  not  a 


PROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  143 

fault  of  Lessing's,  who  was  too  truly  a  man 
of  the  eighteenth  century  not  to  perceive 
that  civilization  was  a  single  task  in  which 
all  European  nations  were  allies.  They  all 
spoke  one  language,  though  in  diifferent 
dialects.  Later,  the  feeling  of  national  dif- 
ferences was  intensified  by  abhorrence  of  the 
superficiality  of  cosmopolitanism,  and,  dis- 
tinctly, by  the  struggle  for  life  against  the 
French }  but  now  we  are  learning  once  more 
the  great  lesson  that  we  are  all  one  family. 
When  science  has  made  this  clear,  we  shall 
see  that  the  leaven  has  again  been  working 
in  literature,  and  meanwhile  even  a  hasty 
examination  will  show  that  there  is  free 
trade  —  in  thought  at  least  —  throughout 
the  civilized  world. 

The  change  from  a  drama  that  repre- 
sented only  kings  and  heroes  of  princely 
birth  to  one  that  concerned  itself  with  hu- 
man beings,  was  as  inevitable  a  thing  as  is 
the  change  in  government  from  despotism 
to  democracy,  with  the  growth  of  the  im- 


144  PROM  OPITZ   TO   LESSTNa. 

portance  of  the  individual.  There  is  a  cer- 
tain monoton}^  in  civilization  which  may  be 
exempHfied  in  a  thousand  ways.  The  large 
gas-pipes,  for  instance,  that  are  laid  in  every 
street,  and  have  the  smaller  branches  run- 
ning into  every  house,  which  again  feed  the 
ramifying  tubes  that  supply  the  single  lights, 
may  remind  one  of  the  advance  from  the 
general  to  the  particular  which  character- 
izes every  form  of  human  thought.  The 
classical  tragedies  presented  a  few  acknowl- 
edged truths  vividly  and  strongly.  Their 
simplicity  and  universality  were  of  great 
service  in  inculcating  a  few  general  jirinci- 
ples,  and  no  one  can  easily  overestimate 
the  educational  value  of  a  code  that  repe- 
tition made  familiar  to  every  student.  The 
mere  mention  of  Csesar's  name  brought  with 
it  a  picture  of  ambition.  Scipio  stood  for 
self-control ;  Medea  for  the  stricken  mother. 
Lucretia  became  the  incarnation  of  matronly 
honour;  Virginia,  that  of  maidenly  purity. 
Europe  was  civilized  by  the  experience  of 


FROM  OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  145 

other  races,  and  the  study  of  the  classics 
was  a  lahor-savmg'  device  which  deserves 
all  the  credit  that  is  not  a  mere  echo  of 
what  people  imagine  that  they  ought  to  say 
to  show  their  cultivation.  But  in  the  last 
century  the  time  began  to  appear  when  au- 
thority ceased  to  serve  its  long-lived  pur- 
pose as  an  educational  means.  What  the 
classics  —  and  especially  the  Latin  classics 
—  could  teach  had  been  thoroughly  learned. 
We  know  that  now  it  would  be  difficult  to 
oppose  a  tyrant  by  calling  him  Tarquin,  and 
we  have  as  dim  a  feeling  for  the  Roman 
proper  names-  as  we  have  after  a  bountiful 
dinner  on  the  twenty-second  of  December 
for  the  sufferings  of  the  Pilgrim  fathers. 
What  Rome  could  do  for  the  world  had 
been  assimilated,  —  to  eradicate  it  would 
have  been  barbarous; — but  to  go  on  repeat- 
ing it  as  if  it  contained  the  whole  truth  that 
man  could  attain  to  would  have  been  intel- 
lectual bondage.  Consequently  men  simply 
left  it  on  one  side  and  took  another  path. 


146  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

There  were  several  inviting  them.  The 
populace  had  already  found  pleasure  in  the 
contemplation  of  itself  and  of  very  unclas- 
sical  heroes,  and  the  habit  spread.  More- 
over, with  democracy  in  the  air,  what  were 
kings  but  convenient  formulas?  ^ot  in  vain, 
as  Boswell's  father  told  Dr.  Johnson,  did 
Cromwell  "  gar  kings  ken  that  they  had  a 
lith  in  their  necks;"  and  when  kings  could 
be  robbed  of  their  influence,  to  say  nothing 
of  their  lives,  by  their  people,  it  became 
evident  that  those  who  held  the  power  were 
also  objects  of  interest.  The  lessons  they 
had  to  learn  were  not  the  vague  truths  that 
Rome  could  teach,  but  the  application  of 
these  truths  to  modern  conditions. 

Let  us  also  notice,  here,  that  the  new  les- 
sons were  taught  with  an  outburst  of  sen- 
timent. Just  as  the  present  new  treatment 
of  the  poor,  by  the  rigid  application  of  sci- 
entific rules,  was  preceded  by  the  gushing 
period  when  charity  consisted  in  putting 
one's  hands  into  one's  pockets  and  bringing 


FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  147 

out  gold  pieces  that  —  not  unnaturally  — 
made  the  pauper  happy,  the  development  of 
modern  literature  without  classic  crutches 
began  with  copious  floods  of  tears,  as  if 
those  authors  foresaw  the  melancholy  con- 
sequences of  the  new  responsibilities  that 
the  world  was  assuming. 

Then,  too,  it  is  not  with  impunity  that 
man  is  born  when  certain  influences  are  at 
work;  these  he  cannot  escape  any  more 
than  he  can  escape  fashions  in  hats.  Lillo's 
"  George  Barnwell  "  was  a  king  done  small. 
The  tragedy  was  like  an  old  tragedy,  with 
a  clerk's  stool  instead  of  a  throne,  and  a 
quill-pen  in  the  place  of  a  sceptre.  What 
would  have  been  regal  was  made  civic.  For 
the  overweening  crimes  of  a  king,  Lillo  i^ut 
a  London  apprentice  succumbing  to  gross 
temptations;  this  was  the  value  of  the 
change,  that  it  was  made  clear  that  a 
change  was  possible;  its  development 
awaited  time.  For  the  discovery  that  free- 
dom is  desirable  is  very  remote  from  the 


148  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSTNG. 

discovery  of  the  best  way  in  which  to  se- 
cure and  maintain  freedom. 

In  writing  this  "Miss  Sara  Sampson," 
Lessing  took  the  only  step  that  was  possi- 
ble for  a  man  abreast  with  his  time.  The 
significance  of  the  school  can  hardly  be 
overestimated,  although  this  bears  but  a  re- 
mote relation  to  its  aesthetic  value.  What 
was  gained  by  the  introduction  of  human 
beings  who,  so  to  speak,  Wore  no  halo,  ran 
a  great  risk  of  being  lost  by  the  substitu- 
tion of  more  conventional  and  social  punish- 
ments for  the  more  serious,  because  eternal, 
ethical  punishments  of  the  older  tragedy. 
The  gallows  that  adorned  the  last  scene  of 
"  George  Barnwell "  was  a  feeble  substitute 
for  more  genuine  tragic  horror,  and  by  the 
introduction  of  the  horrid  vengeance  of  the 
ministers  of  law,  by  having  fate  personified 
as  a  police  officer,  we  see  the  door  opened 
for  the  melodrama,  and  the  same  unneces- 
sary error  that  the  modern  French  novelists 
make,  when,  in  their  effort   to  write   about 


FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  149 

common  people,  they  pick  out  uncommonly 
bad  ones.  I  call  the  error  unnecessary,  and 
so  it  is  when  judged  after  the  event,  but, 
historically,  it  is  necessary  or  at  least  uni- 
formly true  that  we  find  simplicity  the  last 
thing-  attained.  The  whole  gi-adual  lesson 
of  life  is  the  reduction  of  emphasis.  Les- 
sing  speedily  learned  this  truth  which  was 
enforced  upon  him  by  his  eighteenth  century 
training,  and  in  his  "Minna  von  Barnht'lm  " 
(1763)  we  find  it  controlling  and  directing 
him,  for  it  is  never  to  be  forgotten  that  Les- 
sing  belonged  to  the  eighteenth  century. 
This  is  not  merely  a  statement  of  historical 
fact,  but  an  explanation  of  his  merits  and 
of  his  limitations.  We  shall  find  abun- 
dant instances  to  prove  the  assertion  in 
his  critical  writings,  as  well  as  in  his  origi- 
nal writings,  which  are  always  of  the  nature 
of  illustrations  of  the  theoretical  position 
he  attained  by  dint  of  intellectual  work. 
Thus  "Miss  Sara  Sampson"  is  like  a  lec- 
turers drawing  on  the  black-board,  wherein 


150  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

Lessing  makes  plain  what  he  has  to  say 
about  the  domestic  drama;  and  in  "Minna 
von  Barnhelm  "  we  find  a  play  that  throws 
light  upon  his  late  theories  about  the  stage. 
What  first  strikes  us  is  its  literary  perfec- 
tion, and  this  is  a  quality  that  marks  the 
work  of  many  writers  of  the  latter  part  of 
the  last  century,  who  were  keenly  sensitive 
to  the  thoughts  that  inspired  that  interest- 
ing period,  but  whose  eyes  were  not  dazzled, 
and  whose  hands  were  not  made  uncertain, 
by  the  contemplation  of  the  whole  mighty 
upheaval  of  the  romantic  revival.  They 
preserved  a  concinnity  which  was  lost  with 
the  good  manners  that  existed  before  the 
French  revolution.  Voltaire's  French,  for 
instance,  has  known  no  later  followers, 
though  it  was  used  more  or  less  well  by 
many  of  his  contemporaries,  and  in  English 
literature  we  see  something  similar  in  Gold- 
smith's "Vicar  of  Wakefield,"  which  was 
the  last  book  written  in  that  language  that 
can  be  read  and  admired  by  both  scholars 


FKOM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  151 

and  ignorant  people.  Lessing  and  Gold- 
smith both  employed  a  tool  that  had  become 
flexible  and  easy  by  long  practice.  Even 
Klopstock,  although  old  errors  clung  to 
him,  as  Dantzel  well  points  out,  in  trying 
to  make  a  literal  substitution  of  the  Scan- 
dinavian for  the  Grseco-Koman  mythology, 
and  in  forging  new  fetters  after  the  old 
fashion,  ^  opened  wide  fields  to  the  imagin- 
ation, to  do  justice  to  which  exceeded  his 
own  powers.  Lessing,  on  the  other  hand, 
was  controlled  by  the  more  rigid  and  nar- 
rower limits  of  the  vanishing  generation; 
although  the  two  men  were  contemporaries, 
Klopstock  belonged  to  the  younger  race. 
In  the  second  place,  we  notice  that  in 
"  Minna  von  Barnhelm,"  Lessing  succeeded 
in  producing  a  play  that  drew  its  strength 
from  the  fact  that  it  was  a  vivid  picture 
of  German  life.  A  chord  was  touched  that 
had  been  silent  for  centuries ;  the  Germans 
had  imitated  the  French  with  heavy-handed 

^  See  his  "Lessing,"  i,  493. 


152  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

levity,  they  had  tried  to  sing  as  Horace 
sang,  and  to  praise  the  juice  of  the  grape 
as  Anacreon  was  supposed  to  have  done; 
but  now  German  life  found  its  poet,  and 
that  country  at  once  was  fitted  to  take  its 
proper  place  among  the  nations  of  Europe. 
The  play  was  one  result  of  the  Seven  Years' 
War,  which  had  already  called  Gleim  away 
from  the  production  of  Anacreontic  frivoli- 
ties to  singing  patriotic  songs.  Frederick 
the  Great,  to  be  sure,  did  not  care  for  Ger- 
man literature;  a  taste  for  poetry,  as  Kuno 
Fischer  has  truly  said,  ^  is  something  that  is 
formed  in  youth,  a  remark  that  is  especially 
true  of  busy  men,  and  in  his  youth  Gotts- 
ched  was  the  prophet  of  French  taste.  The 
German  writers  were  never  tired  of  making 
allusions  to  Frederick's  indifference  to  their 
work.  !N^ot  only  was  it  impossible  to  recall 
the  golden  age  of  Latin  literature  without 
thinking  of  Augustus,  but  the  position  of 

*  See   his   •'  Lessing    als    Reformator    der     deutschen 
Sprache."    l'«"  Theil,  p.  83. 


.       FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  153 

Richelieu  and  of  Louis  XIY.  in  France  to- 
wards writers  aroused  envy  in  every  Ger- 
man who  was  mterested  in  letters.  When 
Frederick,  a  few  days  before  Rossbach 
(1757),  gave  an  audience  to  Gottsched,  the 
writer  said  Germany  lacked  an  Augustus, 
Frederick  retorted  that  they  had  one.  "^But 
no  Maecenas,'  I  answered."  [  It  is  Gottsched 
who  describes  the  scene.  ]  "'  There  you  are 
right,'  said  the  king.  When  I  urged  fur- 
ther that  German  writers  were  discouraged 
because  the  nobihty  and  the  courtiers  were 
too  famiUar  with  French  and  too  ignorant 
of  German  to  understand  and  appreciate 
their  own  language,  he  said,  ^  That  is  true, 
for  I  have  never  read  a  German  book  since 
I  was  a  boy,  and  I  speak  the  language  like 
a  coachman '  [they  were  talking  in  French] 
*but  now  I'm  an  old  fellow  of  forty-six  and 
have  no  time  to  give  to  it.' "  Three  years 
later,  in  talking  with  Gellert,  Frederick 
asked, ''  Why  have  we  no  more  good  au- 
thors?"—  a    tactful  question,    it  will    be 


154  FROM    OPITZ   TO  LESSINO. 

noticed.  "  Your  majesty  has  formed  a  pre- 
judice against  the  Germans."  "  l!^o,  I  can't 
say  that."  "  At  least,  against  German  writ- 
ers." "  That  is  true."  "  A  good  many  rea- 
sons might  be  assigned  why  the  Germans 
have  not  produced  very  much  first-rate 
work.  While  the  arts  and  sciences  flour- 
ished among  the  Greeks,  the  Romans  were 
at  war.  Possibly  the  present  is  our  war- 
making  age ;  possibly  the  Germans  have  not 
had  an  Augustus."  "What!  Do  you  want 
an  Augustus  for  all  Germany?"  "Not  ex- 
actly that ;  I  only  wish  that  each  monai'ch 
should  encourage  the  geniuses  in  his  own 
territory."  Here  the  king  changed  the  sub- 
ject, for  that  is  a  privilege  which  kings 
enjoy  in  conversation  with  private  citizens. 
When,  a  few  years  after  Lessing's  death, 
Mirabeau  bi'ought  forward  the  same  accu- 
sation against  the  king,  Frederick  replied, 
"You  don't  know  what  you  are  talking 
about.  Just  because  I  have  left  my  subjects 
free  play  and  have  seemed  to  take  no  inter- 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSD^G.  155 

est  in  their  writings,  I  have  done  more  for 
them  and  for  enlightenment  than  if  I  had 
tried  to  drive  them."  But  if  it  is  possible 
now  to  be  grateful  that  Frederick  did  not 
drill  the  Prussians  in  literature,  it  is  easy  to 
see  that  by  his  genius  and  bravery  he  gave 
the  state  that  independence  of  outside  con- 
trol, and  that  feeling  of  self-existence,  which 
animated  Lessing  at  least  in  writing  "  Min- 
na von  Barnhelm."  The  story  of  his  life 
brings  out  very  clearly  the  increasing  strug- 
gle he  had  with  fate,  owing  to  the  indiffer- 
ence of  patrons  of  literature,  but  Freder- 
ick's great  deeds  made  the  play  possible. 

And  how  delightful  the  play  is!  Tell- 
heim,  the  hero,  is  a  wounded  oflScer  who  has 
been  fighting  bravely  under  Frederick,  and 
is  now  discharged;  but  before  he  can  re- 
ceive his  papers  he  must  make  clear  an 
apparent  discrepancy  in  his  accounts.  It 
seems  that,  being  obliged  to  levy  a  contri- 
bution from  a  region  in  which  he  had 
been  quartered,  out  of  commiseration  for 


156  FROM   OPITZ    TO    LESSING. 

the  general  suffering  which  the  war  had 
caused,  he  had  contributed  the  sum  of  two 
thousand  pistoles  out  of  his  own  pocket. 
When  the  peace  was  signed,  he  charged  the 
amount  as  part  of  the  war  debt.  The  note 
given  by  the  district  was  recognized  to  be 
genuine,  but  it  was  regarded  as  a  bribe  to 
Tellheim  for  reducing  the  enforced  contri- 
bution to  its  minimum;  and,  until  the  matter 
is  examined,  he  is  forbidden  to  leave  the 
town.  Meanwhile  he  has  spent  all  his  own 
money ;  most  of  his  servants  have  run  away, 
carrying  with  them  his  belongings;  one. 
Just,  by  name,  is  left  him.  His  sergeant- 
major,  Werner,  who  twice  saved  his  life  in 
the  war,  is  living  near  by,  on  a  little  estate 
that  he  owns.  In  these  circumstances  he 
awaits  his  fate,  —  poor,  wounded,  suspected 
of  dishonesty,  and  further  saddened  by  the 
necessity  of  breaking  his  engagement.  He 
had  been  betrothed  to  Minna  von  Barnhelm, 
who  was  filled  with  admiration  for  his  gen- 
erosity to  the  peoj^le  from  whom  he  had 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  157 

been  ordered  to  extort  a  levy.  But  after  a 
while  he  had  ceased  to  answer  her  letters, 
and  she  had  determined  to  seek  him.  In 
the  company  of  her  maid,  Franziska,  and 
of  her  uncle,  Count  Bruchsall,  a  Saxon 
nobleman,  who  detested  the  Germans,  and 
had  lived  in  Italy  while  the  war  was  going 
on,  she  reached  Berlin  while  her  uncle  was 
detained  at  the  next  station.  By  chance 
she  goes  to  the  inn  where  Tellhcim  was 
staying, — the  "  King  of  Spain."  She  is  rich, 
Tellheim  is  poor;  so  during  his  absence  the 
landlord,  without  ado,  dispossesses  him 
of  his  comfortable  quarters,  thrusts  his  be- 
longings into  a  wretched  hole  in  the  garret, 
telling  Minna  that  the  officer  had  voluntarily 
offered  her  his  room.  Tellheim,  in  his 
wrath,  determines  to  leave  the  inn  at  once, 
and,  having  no  ready  money  for  the  payment 
of  his  bill,  gives  Just  his  engagement  ring 
to  pawn.  Just  gives  it  to  the  landlord,  who 
shows  it  to  Minna,  and  thus  she  learns  that 
Tellheim  is  here.     She  thus  gets  a  view  of 


158  FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

the  whole  matter;  but  she  knows  the  man, 
and  perceives  that  her  difficulties  have  only 
begun.  He  is  as  proud  as  Lucifer,  and 
his  pride  is  the  only  thing  he  will  not  sacri- 
fice for  anyone.  He  can  never  bring  him- 
self to  owe  his  relief  to  her,  and  all  her 
assurances  that  she  would  gladly  share  his 
misery  she  knows  would  be  idle.  But  she 
sees  her  way;  as  a  rich  heiress  she  has  no 
chance;  she  knows  that  if  she  pretends  to 
reject  him  because  she  is  too  poor  and  mis- 
erable, the  obstinate  creature  will  be  melted; 
and  so  it  happens.  The  innocent  deception 
is  finally  exposed,  and  the  curtain  falls  on 
the  best  German  comedy  that  perhaps  was 
ever  written. 

The  ingenuity  of  the  plot  is  really  secon- 
dary to  the  skill  with  which  the  characters 
display  themselves.  The  ingenuity  with 
which  Tellheim  is  drawn  is  above  all  praise. 
In  the  first  place,  the  enthusiasm  that  Just 
feels  for  him  prepares  us  for  making  his 
acquaintance  with  a  prejudice  in  his  favor. 


FEOM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  159 

His  sergeant-major  has  just  brought  him 
five  hundred  thalers,  but  he  refuses  to  touch 
them,  and  yet  he  is  so  poor  that  he  bids  his 
servant  make  out  the  amount  due  him. 
Then  comes  in  the  widow  of  one  of  his  old 
fellow-soldiers,  to  whom  Tellheini  had  lent 
four  hundred  thalers,  and  who,  on  his 
death-bed,  had  enjoined  upon  her  that  she 
must  pay  them.  She  had  sold  everything 
to  raise  the  money,  which  she  now  brings. 

"Let  me  count  the  money,"  she  says. 
"1^0,  indeed;  Marloff  in  debt  to  me?  That 
can  hardly  be.  Let  me  see "  (he  examines 
his  note -book);  "I  don't  find  anything 
about  it." 

'*  You  must  have  mislaid  his  note,  but  that 
formality  makes  no  difference.     Allow  me." 

"  No,  madam,  I  never  mislay  anything  of 
the  kind.  If  I  have  not  it,  that  is  a  sign 
that  I  have  never  had  it,  or  that  it  was  paid 
and  I  gave  it  back  to  him." 

"Major!" 

"Certainly,   madam;  Marloff   owed    me 


160  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

nothing.  I  can't  remember  that  he  was 
ever  in  my  debt.  Indeed,  it  is  more  likely 
that  he  was  my  creditor.  I  have  never 
managed  to  pay  everything  I  owed  to  a 
man  who  for  six  years  shared  good  fortune 
and  bad,  honour  and  danger,  with  me.  I 
shan't  forget  that  he  left  a  son.  He  shall 
be  my  son,  so  soon  as  I  can  be  a  father  to 
him.     I  am  so  confused  to-day " 

"Generous  man!  But  do  not  think  so 
meanly  of  me.  At  least  accept  the  money, 
and  let  me  have  an  easy  conscience." 

"  What  more  do  yon  need  than  my  assur- 
ance that  the  money  does  not  belong  to  me? 
Or  do  you  want  me  to  rob  my  friend's 
fatherless  son?  for  that  is  what  it  amounts 
to.  It  belongs  to  him;  lay  it  aside  for 
him." 

One  notices  the  lifelike  confusion  of 
reasons. 

"I  understand  you.  Excuse  me  if  I 
don't  understand  exactly  how  to  receive 
favors.     But  how   did  you  know  that   a 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  161 

mother  would  do  more  for  her  son  than  she 
would  do  for  her  own  life?  " 

'No  sooner  is  the  door  closed  upon  her 
than  Tellheim  says :  "  Poor,  noble  woman  I 
I  must  not  forget  to  destroy  the  note ; "  and 
he  takes  it  from  his  pocket-book  and  tears 
it  into  fragments.  "  Who  knows,"  he  goes 
on,  "that  my  misery  might  not  some  day 
lead  me  to  make  use  of  it?"  This  touch 
was,  and  is,  most  thrilling  on  the  stage. 

The  next  scene,  in  which  Just  brings  in 
his  bill,  showing  that  he  owes  his  master 
91  thalers,  16  groschen,  3  pfennigs,  is  ex- 
cellent reading.  "  Fellow,  you  are  crazy !  " 
says  Tellheim.  "  What  are  you  looking  at 
me  for?  You  don't  owe  me  anything,  and 
I  will  recommend  you  to  some  one  of  my 
friends  where  you  will  be  better  off  than 
you  can  be  with  me." 

"  I  don't  owe  you  anything,  and  yet  you 
want  to  turn  me  away?" 

"Because  I  am  not  willing  to  get  into 
debt  to  you." 


162  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSINQ. 

Then  Just,  who  bears  a  close  family 
likeness  to  Trim,  in  Sterne's  "Tristram 
Shandy,"  recounts  his  experience  with  a 
poodle :  "  Last  winter  I  was  walking  b}' 
the  canal,  when  I  heard  a  sort  of  whimper- 
ing. I  climbed  down  in  the  direction  of 
the  voice ;  I  thought  I  was  saving  a  child 
from  drowning,  and  drew  a  poodle  out  of 
the  water.  'All  right,'  thought  I.  The 
poodle  followed  me ;  but  I  'm  no  great  fi-iend 
of  poodles.  I  tried  to  get  rid  of  him,  but 
in  vain.  I  whipped  him  off,  but  in  vain. 
I  would  not  let  him  sleep  in  my  room; 
he  lay  just  outside  of  the  door.  If  he 
came  near  me,  I  kicked  him  off;  he  would 
howl,  look  at  me,  and  wag  his  tail.  I  have 
never  given  him  a  crumb  of  bread,  and  yet 
I  am  the  only  person  whose  voice  he  will 
hear.  He  leaps  about  me,  and  is  always 
showing  off  his  little  tricks.  He  is  an  ugly 
cur,  but  a  good  dog  after  all.  If  he  goes 
on,  I  shall  get  fond  of  poodles."  And  when 
Tellheim  savs  that   he  means  to  leave  the 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  163 

inn,  he  bids  Just  to  pack  up  all  his  things, 
the  pistols  that  hang  at  the  head  of  his  bed, 
and,  "One  thing  more:  bring  the  poodle 
along;  do  you  understand.  Just?  " 

These  selections,  however,  do  the  play 
injustice,  because  they  make  it  appear  as  if 
Tellheim  were  always  posing  for  the  proud 
man;  but  in  fact  these  characterizations  are 
kept  subordinate  to  the  movement  of  the 
play.  When  Minna  is  chatting  with  her 
maid,  for  instance,  we  find  equal  skill.  Thus 
Franziska  says:  "People  seldom  speak  of 
the  virtue  they  have,  but  so  much  the  oft- 
ener  of  the  one  they  lack." 

"  Do  you  see,  Franziska,  you  have  made  a 
very  wise  remark?" 

^*Made?  Does  one  make  what  just  hap- 
pens to  occur  to  one  ?  "         , 

"And  do  you  know  why  I  like  it  so 
much?     It  applies  to  my  Tellheim." 

"  And  what  in  the  world  would  you  not 
apply  to  him?" 

"Friends  and  foes  agree  that  he  is  the 


164  PROM   OPITZ    TO    LESSTNG. 

bravest  man  in  the  world.  But  who  ever 
heard  him  talk  about  bravery?  He  has  the 
most  upright  heart  in  the  world,  but  up- 
rightness and  generosity  are  words  that 
never  crossed  his  lips." 

"  What  sort  of  virtues  does  he  talk  about, 
then?" 

"  About  none,  for  he  has  them  all,** 

"  I  wanted  to  hear  that." 

"  But  wait  a  minute,  let  me  think.  He 
does  talk  a  good  deal  about  economy.  I 
will  say  in  confidence  that  I  think  the  man 
is  extravagant." 

"  Oh  yes.  I  have  often  heard  him  men- 
tion truth  and  constancy  to  you;  how  if  he 
should  haj^pen  to  be  a  flirt?  " 

Lessing  could  be  light  as  well  as  pathetic. 
One  last  extract  shall  show  this  rarer  qual- 
ity of  feeling.  AYerner  tries  to  force  some 
money  on  him,  which  Tellheim  refuses.  "  It 
is  not  proper  that  I  should  be  your  debtor." 

"  Not  proper?  When  that  hot  day,  which 
the  sun  and  the  enemy  both  made  hot,  and 


FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  165 

your  groom  had  gone  astray  with  the  can- 
teen, and  you  came  to  me  and  said  '  Werner, 
have  you  got  anything  to  drink? '  and  I  held 
out  mine  to  you,  did  n't  you  take  it  and  drink 
from  it?  "VYas  that  proper?  By  my  poor 
soul,  as  if  a  drink  of  wretched  water  at 
that  moment  was  not  more  than  all  that 
stuff  I  (he  holds  out  the  purse.)  Take  it, 
dear  Major!  Just  imagine  it's  water.  God 
created  it  for  us  all." 

"  You  agonize  me ;  don't  you  understand 
that  I  don't  want  to  be  your  debtor?" 

"  Oh !  that 's  very  different.  You  don't 
want  to  be  my  debtor?  But  how  if  you  hap- 
pened to  be  already?  Or  don't  you  owe  any- 
thing to  the  man  who  caught  the  blow  that 
was  aimed  at  your  head,  and  another  time 
cut  off  the  arm  that  was  about  to  send  a  bul- 
let into  you?  How  could  you  owe  this  man 
any  more?  Or  is  my  neck  less  important 
than  my  purse?  If  that  is  a  proper  thought, 
by  my  poor  soul,  it 's  in  abominably  poor 
taste."    And  when   Tell  helm   still  refuses, 


166  FKOM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

Werner  fires  this  parting  shot:  "I  have 
often  thought:  How  will  it  be  when  you  are 
old  and  crippled;  when  you  have  nothing 
left;  when  you  must  beg  your  way  from 
dooi-  to  door?  Then  I  thought:  No,  you 
won't  have  to  beg;  there  's  Major  Tellheim? 
you  '11  go  to  him,  he  will  share  his  last  penny 
with  you,  he  will  support  you  as  long  as 
you  live,  and  you  '11  die  an  honest  man. 
1  don't  think  so  any  longer.  Whoever 
won't  take  anything  from  me  when  he  needs 
it  and  I  've  got  it,  won't  give  me  anything 
when  he  has  it  and  I  need  it.  Oh,  very 
well !  "  The  reader  will  notice  the  forebod- 
ing of  the  tactics  which  Minna  employed. 
Yet  there  is  one  thing  to  be  noticed  in 
these  scenes,  and  this  is  the  way  in  which 
Lessing  addresses  the  sensibility  of  his 
hearers.  At  a  time  when  Klopstock,  and 
the  translations  from  the  English  were 
moistening  every  eye,  he  drew  this  reserved 
officer  and  the  intelligent  heroine  in  a  man- 
ner that  was  as  far  as  possible  removed  from 


PROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSIKG.  167 

the  effusive.  In  one  place  where  they  are 
talking,  she  says:  "Patience,  yon  still 
love  me  I  that  is  enough  for  me.  But  what 
a  tone  I  Ve  fallen  into !  An  odions,  melan- 
choly, contagious  tone.  I  must  resume  a 
natural  one.  ^NTow,  my  poor  dear  fellow, 
you  still  love  me,  you  have  yonr  Minna,  and 
are  unhappy?  Just  hear  what  a  poor  con- 
ceited creature  yonr  Minna  was  —  is.  She 
fancied,  she  fancies  that  she  is  your  only 
happiness.  Come,  out  with  all  your  unhap- 
piness!  She  wishes  to  see  how  much  she 
outweighs  it.  — Well?" 

"  I  am  not  used  to  complaining." 

"That  is  right.  I*^ext  to  bragging,  I 
don't  know  what  is  more  detestable  in  a 
soldier  than  complaining.  But  there  is  a 
certain  cold,  indifferent  way  of  speaking  of 
one's  bravery  and  misfortunes." 

"Which  is  yet  bragging  and  complaining 
all  the  same,"  rejoins  Tcllheim. 

Does  not  this  scene  fairly  represent  Les- 
sing's  views  of  the  new  sensibility?    While 


1C8  FROM    OPITZ    TO  LESSING. 

his  contemporaries  manufactured  pathos,  he 
sang  the  beauty  of  reserve  with  the  same 
reasonable  intelligence  that  he  showed  in 
contrasting  the  Prussian  and  the  Saxon,  and 
in  pointing  out  the  reconciliation  between 
them  when  German  patriotism  was  revelling 
in  the  celebration  of  Hermann  and  other 
remote  heroes.  The  new  Romanticism  did 
not  address  him;  he  had  the  love  of  com- 
pleteness, of  perfect  form,  which  distin- 
guished the  generation  before  the  romantic 
authors  began  to  write;  he  was  the  last 
of  a  long  line;  they  were  the  crude 
beginners  of  a  new  epoch.  His  main  task 
was  correcting  and  classifying  the  past. 
Thereby  he,  to  be  sure,  made  the  way 
smoother  for  his  successors  because  the 
work  of  every  generation  is  built  up  on 
what  went  before  it,  but  the  confusion  of 
the  new  men  only  disturbed  him.  Like 
Klopstock,  he  disliked  Goethe's  "  "Werther," 
which  was  the  declaration  of  war  for  a  later 
generation.    Whereas  they  were  tui'bid  and 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSESTG.  169 

uncertain,  he  who  had  won  for  himself  the 
command  of  what  seemed  best  in  the  world 
could  not  endure  the  inevitable  abandon- 
ment of  old  models  just  as  soon  as  these 
had  been  cleared  of  the  dust  of  centuries. 
In  his  eyes  the  new  men  were  going  hope- 
lessly astray.  He  had  restored  antiquity  to 
its  proper  place,  he  had  helped  to  bring 
Shakespeare  into  repute,  he  had  overthrown 
Gottsched  and  proved  the  unwisdom  of  the 
vague  Swiss  critics,  but  in  stating  the  laws 
of  tragedy  as  Aristotle  meant  them  instead 
of  as  the  French  imitators  of  Seneca  had 
perverted  them,  he  had  left  it  to  Herder  to 
show  how  much  beauty  there  was  outside 
of  the  classics.  He  was  the  greatest  of  the 
assthetic  critics,  while  Herder  established 
historical  criticism  which  is  now  trying  to 
get  a  foothold  in  English-speaking  nations, 
and  has  placed  Germany  at  the  head  of  the 
world  in  most  matters  of  study.  The  man- 
ner in  which  Lessing  turned  his  back  on 
the  modern  excessive  sensibility  is  illustra- 


170  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSINO. 

tive  of  his  whole  position  with  regard  to  the 
new  movement,  and  a  most  striking  proof 
of  the  comparative  nnfruitfulness  of  mere 
aesthetic  criticism.  So  far  as  aesthetic 
beauty  is  concerned,  no  comparison  is  pos- 
sible between  Lessing's  dignified,  impres- 
sive handling  of  the  emotions  and  the  wal- 
lowing, gushing  enthusiasm  of  which  we 
have  seen  traces  in  Klopstock  and  some  of 
his  admirers;  yet  their  very  excesses  held 
latent  the  seeds  of  much  that  has  enriched 
the  world  as  the  eighteenth  century  at  its 
best  could  never  have  done.  The  future 
lay  in  those  absurdities,  to  which  Lessing's 
back  was  turned  while  he  rediscovered  the 
golden  past.  We  can  see  in  the  history  of 
English  literature  the  same  truth,  that  in 
the  blunders  made  by  the  fervours  of  inex- 
perience, there  is  a  new  revelation  seeking 
expression,  just  as  in  the  tiresome  high 
spirits  and  chronic  bubbling  disobedience  of 
a  child  there  may  lie  a  finer,  more  original 
character  than  in  the  smug  docility  of  the 


FROM   OPITZ   TO  LESSEN^G.  171 

precocious  prig.  Let  us  not  forget  that  the 
only  consolation  of  the  German  generals 
whom  ^N^apoleon  was  forever  thrashing,  was 
that  they  had  at  any  rate  fought  according 
to  the  rules. 

If,  in  comparing  English  with  German 
literature,  we  go  back  to  Goldsmith,  it  is 
easy  to  see  how  superior  his  smooth  and 
discreetly  tender  verse  must  have  seemed  to 
those  who  were  bidden  to  admire  Words- 
worth's occasionally  hoarse  and  frequently 
tedious  descriptions  of  nature,  but  in 
Wordsworth  there  was  a  new  view  of  the 
world  laid  open  to  readers  and'  thinkers. 
Perfection  of  work  is  an  indication  of 
approaching  change,  but  it  is  rare  for  the 
man  who  has  been  brought  up  on  the  com- 
plete form  to  be  able  to  admire  the  follow- 
ing one.  Yet  every  labourer  at  the  task  of 
building  up  civilization  even  unconsciously 
raises  the  edifice  higher,  although  each  one 
carries  his  own  hod  and  is  apt  to  grumble 
at  his  fellow-workers.      The  very  qualities 


172  PROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

that  enable  a  man  to  do  one  sort  of  work 
tend  to  dull  his  appreciation  and  compre- 
hension of  another. 

Moreover,  there  is  in  literature  a  quickly 
vanishing  moment  of  perfection,  as  there  is 
one  of  legality  in  the  course  of  a  revolution, 
which  is  speedily  lost  sight  of  in  the  whirl 
of  change.  The  revolution  may  have  every 
right  on  its  side,  but  it  demands  for  its 
accomplishment  that  all  the  previous  laws 
be  broken  before  a  healthier  society  can  be 
organized;  yet  there  is  an  inevitable  division 
at  this  point  between  those  who  are  bound 
by  feeling,  habit,  and  education  to  uphold 
existing  laws,  and  those  who  look  beyond 
the  laws  to  the  grander  final  result.  In  our 
own  history,  and  notably  in  the  scruples  of 
those  who  wondered  whether  the  govern- 
ment was  justified  in  calling  for  troops  at 
the  beginning  of  our  war,  we  may  see  an 
example  of  the  latter  class.  In  literature, 
Lessing  belonged  to  the  other  men,  who 
hold  to  legality ;  whose  work  is  far  removed 


FROM    OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  173 

from  the  anarchy  of  the  revohitionists,  and 
who  prefer  perfecting  the  past  to  making 
rash  experiments  with  the  future.  Whereas 
his  contemporaries  busied  themselves  with 
the  extravagant  representation  of  the  mid- 
dle ages  and  the  unrestrained  emotions  of 
their  own  day,  he  at  one  time  wrote  imita- 
tions of  Greek  plays  and  never  followed 
their  laxer  course. 

The  "EmiUa  Galotti,"  too,  is  full  of  the 
eighteenth-century  impulse,  although  that 
quality  is  far  from  being  the  most  noticeable 
thing  about  the  play.  It  is  the  fruit  of  long 
study  of  the  drama  and  its  laws,  for  against 
Lessing  there  cannot  be  brought  the  current 
and  very  old  accusation  that  a  critic  is  one 
who  has  failed  in  creative  work;  on  the 
contrary,  he  was  a  critic  whose  lessons  were 
full  of  profit,  and  who,  after  stirring  up  a 
hornet's  nest,  brought  out  some  original 
work  as  a  model  for  those  whom  his  criti- 
cism had  offended.  His  "Minna"  was  a 
model  comedy;  there  yet  remained  the  tra- 


174-  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSrN^G. 

gedy  to  be  done.  In  the  interval  between 
the  two  plays  he  had  written  his  "Ham- 
burger Dramaturgie,"  in  which  he  had  dis- 
cussed the  laws  and  the  best  conditions  of  the 
drama  with  a  vividness,  an  impressiveness, 
and  a  fund  of  learning  that  one  is  not  accus- 
tomed to  associate  with  a  theatrical  critic. 
All  this  consideration  of  Aristotle,  of  Cor- 
neille,  of  Yoltaire,  of  Shakespeare,  bore  rich 
fruit,  although  his  appreciation  of  the  great 
English  tragedian  was  very  different  from 
the  unbounded  admiration  that  the  younger 
men  felt  for  him.  As  early  as  1759,  in  one 
of  his  Literaturbriefey  while  reproving  Gott- 
sched  for  copying  the  French  stage,  he 
said  that  if  the  early  critic  had  translated 
some  of  Shakespeare's  masterpieces  with  a 
few  slight  alterations,^  he  would  have  done 

^  Cholovius,  "Geschichte  dcr  deutscben  Poesie,"  thcil  i., 
p.  537,  h:is  some  interesting  remarks  on  this  matter,  jwint- 
ing  out  how  irajxissiblc  it  would  have  been  for  Gottsched  to 
do  what  Lessing  wished  tliat  he  liad  done.  As  we  have  seen, 
the  poor  man  had  no  choice,  and  Lessing's  error  may  serve 
as  a  warning  against  neglecting  the  historical  conditions. 
It  is  not  unlike  regi-etting  that  the  Greeks  did  not  use  mod- 
em artillery  in  the  siege  of  Troy. 


FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING.  175 

better  than  he  did  in  making  the  Germans 
acquainted  with  Corneille  and  Racine;  that 
Shakespeare  would  have  inspired  writers, 
for  a  genius  can  be  kindled  only  by  a 
genius,  and  most  easily  by  one  who  owes 
all  his  merit  to  nature,  and  does  not  repel 
admirers  by  the  tedious  perfections  of  art. 
But,  while  here  Lessing  mentions  Shake- 
speare's apparent  lack  of  art,  he  goes  on  to 
point  out  that,  even  with  regard  to  art, 
Shakespeare  is  a  much  greater  tragic  poet 
than  Corneille. 

Nearly  ten  years  later,  when  Wieland's 
translation  and  Gerstenberg's  commentary 
had  appeared,  he  spoke  of  Shakespeare 
in  the  "  Hamburger  Dramaturgic ;  "  but  al- 
though he  was  then  writing  his  "Emilia 
Galotti,"  he  found  no  inspiration  in  Shake- 
speare. But  in  a  later  period,  between  1773 
and  1787,  we  see  the  influence  of  Shako- 
spearc  dominant  in  the  work  of  the  3'oungcr 
men.  Lessing's  root  lay  in  the  classic  liter- 
ature.    His  thorough  study  of  the  earlier 


176  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

masters  naturally  turned  him  away  from  the 
crude  domestic  tragedy  which  had  inspired 
"Miss  Sara  Sampson,"  while  at  the  same 
time  it  taught  him  to  avoid  the  error  of  the 
French  classical  drama  in  unnecessarily  nar- 
rowing the  limits  that  were  imposed  by  the 
critics  under  the  shadow  of  Aristotle's  name. 
On  the  one  hand,  it  taught  him  the  folly  of 
a  colourless  copy  of  the  French  plays, — his 
last  words  in  the  "  Dramaturgic  "  had  been 
that,  without  being  a  poet,  there  was  not 
one  of  Coi-neille's  plays  which  he  could  not 
improve,  —  and,  on  the  other,  he  had  learned 
not  to  mistake  a  mere  sentimental  attack  on 
the  feelings  for  real  tragic  action.  In  the 
tragedy  that  was  growing  up  since  Lillo's 
famous — rather  than  great — play,  the  new 
notion  of  the  importance  of  the  individual, 
which  had  been  lost  sight  of  in  the  promi- 
nence given  to  cultivation  and  to  social 
position,  was  beginning  to  assert  itself 
anew  by  means  of  the  sympathy  that  was 
felt  for  a  man  who  suffered,  even  if  his  suf- 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSIKG.  177 

ferings  were,  so  to  speak,  the  mere  result  of 
accident,  and  not  of  serious  tragic  fault. 
The  main  point  was  that  the  individual  snf- 
fered;  the  cause  of  his  misery  was  unim- 
portant. But  in  Lessing's  eyes  the  immu- 
table laws  of  art  admitted  no  such  limitation. 
He  determined  to  write  a  tragedy  in  which 
the  final  issue  should  be  the  natural  result 
of  the  action  of  the  characters,  and  not  a 
mere  external,  cruel  accident.  The  result 
was  "Emilia  Galotti." 

It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  the  under- 
lying plot  was  taken  from  the  old  Roman 
story  of  Virginia,  wherein  Lessing  showed 
his  willingness  to  meet  the  classical  drama- 
tists on  their  own  ground;  but  in  adapting 
the  plot  to  modern  times  he  showed  them  in 
what  way  the  ancients  should  be  held  as 
models,  while  ho  was  able  to  make  clear  to 
his  contemporaries  how  the  present  was  to 
be  treated.  That  he  deliberately  chose  that 
story  with  this  conscious  purpose  cannot  be 
directly  affirmed,  but  his  selection  had  at 


178  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

any  rate  this  double  advantage.  Yet  the 
etoiy  of  "  Emilia  Galotti "  is  not  to  be  com- 
pared, line  for  line,  with  the  classic  original. 
He  made  no  copy  on  tracing-paper;  the 
whole  notion  of  peril  for  the  state,  that 
connts  for  much  in  the  Roman  original, 
disappears  from  his  play;  all  that  is  left  is 
the  tragic  story  of  the  young  girl's  honour 
preserved  by  death. 

Every  one  who  knows  anything  about 
German  literature  is  familiar  with  this  play 
and  will  recall  its  incidents.  Emilia  is 
about  to  be  married  to  the  Count  Appiani, 
and  the  young  Prince  who  has  already  seen 
her  and  fallen  in  love  with  her  is  beside 
himself  on  hearing  this  fact.  His  minister 
and  intimate  adviser,  Marinelli,  begs  him  to 
entrust  the  matter  to  him.  The  Prince  ac- 
cedes, and  Marinelli  arranges  the  assassina- 
tion of  the  Count,  and  the  abduction  of  Emi- 
lia with  her  mother.  A  mask  of  politeness 
hides  their  real  intentions.  The  pretext 
that  the  murder  of  the  Count  demands  a 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSTKG.  179 

judicial  investigation  is  made  the  reason  for 
detaining  the  two  women,  but  the  father  is 
admitted  to  see  them.  Emilia  acknowledges 
the  peril  of  her  position.  This  it  is  that 
induces  the  father  to  kill  her,  a  deed  for 
which  she  thanks  him  as  she  dies. 

It  is  not  new  for  this  termination  of  the 
play  to  call  forth  wonder.  At  the  time  of 
its  first  appearance  numerous  critics  pointed 
out  the  unsatisfactory  end.  Goethe,  indeed, 
suggested  that  Emilia  was  conscious  of 
feeling  an  interest  in  the  Prince,  but  there 
is  every  reason  to  doubt  whether  Lessing 
could  have  permitted  himself  to  represent 
this  accidental  emotion,  and  one,  too,  that  is 
nowhere  stated  or  implied  as  the  turning- 
point  of  a  tragedy  in  which  clearness  was 
as  essential  as  truth.  The  hypothesis  is 
one  that  could  explain  better  the  plays  writ- 
ten after  Lessing,  when  sudden  passions  took 
the  place  that  had  in  earlier  times  been  oc- 
cupied by  equally  mysterious  fate.  That 
Emilia  Galotti,  whose  betrothed  had  just 


180  FROM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

been  slain,  could  contemplate  for  a  moment 
the  probable  fjiscinations  of  the  vicious 
society  at  the  house  of  Marinelli,  is  some- 
thing simply  surprising,  and  it  may  be  fair 
to  adopt  for  explanation  the  hypothesis  that, 
in  Emilia,  Lessing  tried  to  draw  a  woman 
who  should  represent  an  old-fashioned  ideal 
of  domesticity  and  maidenly  i*eserve.  In  a 
letter  to  his  brother  he  wrote:  "Girlish 
heroines  and  philosophers  arc  not  at  all  to  my 
taste.  I  know  in  unmarried  girls  no  higher 
virtues  than  piety  and  obedience;"  of  inde- 
pendence he  has  nothing  to  say,  and  by 
thus  depriving  Emilia  of  those  qualities 
that  assure  safety  in  the  circumstances 
wherein  she  finds  herself,  he  has  no  other 
way  of  cutting  the  web  that  has  formed 
about  her  than  by  putting  her  to  death. 
Thus  villainy  is  baffled,  and  an  impossible, 
or  at  least  an  antiquated,  ideal  is  preserved. 
Yet  the  new  men,  wMth  one  consent,  criti- 
cised this  solution.  Lessing  here,  as  else- 
where, clung  to  the  past,  and,  with  every 


FROM   OPITZ   TO  LESSES^G.  181 

qtialification  in  his  possession,  he  left  the 
future  of  the  German  stage  in  the  hands 
of  men  who,  however  crudely,  let  women 
count  as  characters,  not  as  mere  accumula- 
tions of  domestic  virtues. 

Yet  it  is  impossible  to  speak  too  highly  of 
the  mechanical  execution  of  the  play;  this 
quality  alone  sufficed  to  make  it  a  model  for 
future  workers,  and  its  influence  is  easily 
detected  in  Schiller's  "Kabale  and  Liebe." 
This  latter  play  is  a  direct  attact  on  the  vi- 
ciousness  of  German  princelings,  and  it  is 
easy  to  suppose  that  the  keen  intelligence 
of  Lessing  did  not  fail  to  understand  the 
truth  which  was  very  obvious  to  those  who 
saw  the  play,  that  the  condemnation  of 
licentious  rulers  was  capable  of  very  vivid 
application  in  Germany.  Goethe,  in  one  of 
his  talks  with  Eckei'mann  (Feb.  7,  1827), 
lamented  the  polemical  tone  in  Lessing's 
work,  ascribing  its  existence  to  the  wretch- 
edness of  the  times  in  which  he  lived.  He 
said,  "In  the  ^Emilia  Galotti,'  he  gave  yent 


182  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

to  his  grudge  against  the  princes  ;  in  *  Na- 
than,' his  grudge  against  the  priests."  Yet 
if  this  was  true — and  there  seems  no  good 
ground  for  doubting  it,  for  Lessing  had 
never  been  spoiled  by  courts — his  spirit 
was  rather  a  correcting  one  than  it  was  an 
iconoclastic  wrath,  such  as  that  which  ani- 
mated Schiller.  He  had  as  little  of  the 
^  revolutionary  spirit  in  political  as  in  literary 
matters;  the  solution  of  the  difficulties  that 
beset  that  period  was  like  the  one  that  we 
are  all  striving  to  find  now:  it  was  to  set 
right  existing  evils,  not  to  rise  and  over- 
throw them  violently.  This  destructive 
feeling  belonged  only  to  the  younger  men, 
and  was  gradually  lifting  its  head  in  letters 
just  as  now  the  spirit  of  revolution  that 
manifests  itself  in  fierce  detestation  of  gov- 
ernment appears  in  literature  as  a  desire  to 
paint  the  ordinary  man  as  he  is,  not  as  peo- 
ple imagine  that  others  think  that  he  is. 

In  the  "  Nathan  the  Wise,"  again,  Les- 
sing sought  a  similar  solution;  the  whole 


FKOM   OPITZ   TO   LESSESTG.  183 

play  is,  as  it  were,  an  apologue  illustrative 
of  the  views  he  held  about  religious  ques- 
tions. One  of  the  most  widespread  of  the 
movements  that  marked  the  period  of  en- 
lightenment was  the  excitement  in  behalf 
of  free-thinking,  that,  like  much  else  of  the 
best  inspiration  of  the  last  century,  had  its 
origin  in  England.  It  was  one  chapter  of 
the  great  lesson  of  freedom  that  demanded 
release  from  the  shackles  of  authority  in 
politics,  literature,  and  ecclesiasticism,  and  of 
all  these  subjects  the  relation  of  man  to  the 
chiu'ch  is  not  the  least  important.  Yet,  in- 
asmuch as  the  tendency  of  the  church  mani- 
fested itself  mainly  in  a  desire  to  subordinate 
society  to  its  control,  wherein  it  should  hold 
a  position  of  chief  magistrate,  the  opposition 
limited  itself  mainly  to  opposing  the  claims 
of  priestcraft.  This  must  be  continually 
borne  in  mind,  if  we  are  anxious  to  form  a 
just  conception  of  the  controversy.  It  was 
not  a  magnificent,  inspiring  religion  that 
was  attacked,  but  a  petrified,  heartless  social 


184  FEOM   OPITZ    TO   LESSING. 

form,  in  which  a  feeUng"  of  simple  devotion 
would  have  been  as  out  of  place  as  one  of 
Goethe's  lyrics  in  a  tragedy  of  Gottsched's. 
It  was  universally  agreed  that  it  was  not 
religion  in  itself  that  was  assaulted,  any 
more  than  literature  was  the  object  of  those 
who  denounced  the  rules.  Questions  are 
not  answered  until  they  are  asked;  and  not 
yet  was  the  discussion  begun  as  to  whether 
or  not  some  form  of  religion  was  necessary. 
The  antagonists  of  a  corrupt  religion  were 
Deists;  of  the  later  religious  excitement  of 
the  Methodists,  Atheists.  In  England  the 
fight  was  always  on  the  outskirts;  there 
was  no  attack  on  the  citadel.  The  Deists, 
by  their  very  name,  showed  that  they  ac- 
knowledged a  purer  and  simpler  form  of 
belief,  which  they  would  fain  establish.  The 
Infdme  against  which  Voltaire  raged  was 
not  the  religious  sense,  but  a  corrupt  reli- 
gion; one  marked  in  France  by  every  vice 
of  persecution  and  intolerance  that  inspired 
his  hate.     In  England,  religion  is  always  a 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSEN^G.  185 

very  important  part  of  the  social  structure. 
Swedenborg  noticed  that  in  heaven  the 
English  kept  very  much  to  themselves,  and 
free-thought  has  been  doubly  dangerous  in 
that  country,  because  it  has  been  unfashion- 
able. The  avowed  non-believer  has  been  a 
social  outcast.  In  France,  however,  non- 
belief  was  a  more  serious  matter,  and  threat- 
ened its  supporters  with  more  serious  trou- 
bles than  was  the  case  across  the  channel  ; 
so  that  whatever  one  may  think  of  Voltaire's 
religious  sentiments,  it  is  impossible  not  to 
admire  his  noble  defence,  in  the  face  of  real 
danger,  of  the  victims  of  religious  persecu- 
tion. In  Germany  the  questions  concerned 
were  much  less  important ;  yet  even  here,  in 
the  home  of  modern  theology,  they  excited 
an  interest  which  they  lacked  in  England. 
There  was  no  such  contrast  as  in  France  be- 
tween the  lives  and  tlie  duties  of  the  eccles- 
iastics; the  higher  officials  of  the  church 
were  not  leaders  in  debauchery,  as  was 
sometimes   the    case   in   the  neighbouring 


186  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSLN^G. 

country,  and  persecution  did  not  go  so  far 
as  to  burn  its  victims  at  the  stake.  Yet  an 
arid,  hide-bound  orthodoxy  existed,  against 
which  Lessing  fought  for  some  time,  and  it 
was  this  contest  that  called  forth  the 
"  IS'athan."  This  play,  then,  held  the  same 
position  in  regard  to  his  theological  dis- 
cussions that  his  "Emilia"  did  to  his 
"Dramaturgic;  "  it  was  the  creative  equiv- 
alent of  his  critical  work.  It  inculcated  the 
same  lesson  of  tolerance  that  was  the  aim 
of  the  whole  movement.  Whereas  in  France 
the  strife  was  complicated  by  the  way  in 
which  Voltaire  felt  compelled  to  mine  the 
ground  beneath  his  dangerous  opponents, 
by  disproving  the  basis  of  revealed  religion, 
here  the  contest  took  place  in  a  field  where 
intellectual  controversy  had  more  weight. 
The  question  was  one  that  excited  general 
interest,  while  in  England  the  common  feel- 
ing had  been  one  of  indignation  against  the 
men  who  insisted  on  brawling  instead  of 
letting  things  run  on  in  the  old-fashioned 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  187 

way.  Having  started  the  question,  tho 
English  did  not  care  for  an  answer.  It 
lost  practical  importance  for  them,  and,  as 
they  often  did  with  exciting  theories,  they, 
as  it  were,  transported  the  serious  consider- 
ation of  it  to  other  countries,  as  if  it  were  a 
convict.  English  literature  resumed  its  glib 
acceptance  of  all  the  social  conditions  of  life 
as  if  no  harassing  questions  existed  to  tor- 
ment the  anxious,  just  as  now  it  runs  on 
as  if  vice  and  black  error  did  not  exist  in 
the  world.  [N^othing  can  better  illustrate 
the  difference  between  England  and  Ger- 
many at  this  period  than  the  contemplation 
of  the  impossibility  that  a  play  like  Les- 
sing's  "  l^athan "  should  have  appeared  in 
London.  The  stage  was  devoted  to  such 
new  plays  as  Foote's  farces,  the  comedies 
of  Sheridan  and  Goldsmith,  and  Home's 
tragedies,  which  had  equally  little  to  do 
with  serious  thought.  Germany,  however, 
was  busy  with  the  examination  of  the  many 
new  notions  that  were  in  the  air,  and  was 


188  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

preparing  for  the  prominent  place  it  was 
about  to  take  in  the  romantic  revival.  As 
in  France,  the  men  who  were  making  over 
literature  were  also  making  over  the  thought 
of  many  men  on  other  subjects;  and  the 
point  that  was  reached  by  Lessing  here 
bore  strong  resemblance,  in  its  wisdom  and 
reasonableness,  to  what  Lessing  had  striven 
to  attain  in  his  purely  literary  work.  Tol- 
eration is  in  no  way  a  revolutionary  step; 
it  implies,  too,  the  same  acceptance  of  the 
past,  but  of  a  past  shorn  of  its  growth  of 
bigotry,  that  we  have  seen  in  Lessing's 
elevation  of  the  stage.  Orthodoxy  had  be- 
come a  thing  of  hard  and  fast  rule  like  the 
pseudo-classical  tragedy,  and  in  his  ti'eat- 
ment  of  both  we  may  see  Lessing's  desire  to 
bring  forward  saner  notions,  but  by  way  of 
modification,  not  of  revolution. 

It  is  with  truth  that  the  "]N'athan"  is 
called  the  one  play  which  is  full  of  the 
eighteenth  century  spirit;*  all  that  is  best 

»  See  Mr.  John  Morley's  "  Diderot,"  p.  227. 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  189 

in  that  interesting  period  finds  expression 
there;  the  ideal  was  a  high  one:  toleration, 
reasonable  endurance  of  others.  What  can 
be  grander  than  such  a  lesson?  But  its 
very  perfection  prophesied  its  brief  exist- 
ence. It  was  an  ideal  attained  by  a  few, 
but  too  remote  from  the  popular  comj^re- 
hension  to  endure.  It  lacked  a  sufficient 
historical  basis.  Tolerance  is  only  really 
learned  otherwise  than  by  reason,  and  this 
elevated  point  was  a  quickly  vanishing  one, 
which  was  soon  lost  sight  of.  It  was,  like 
all  the  eighteenth  century  thought,  an 
essentially  aristocratic  position,  the  doc- 
trine of  the  remnant,  and  as  unable  to  save 
the  world  as  a  few  champions  are  to  settle 
a  modern  war  by  single  combat.  .. 

Ko;  at  the  very  moment  when  tragedy 
was  made  simple,  direct,  and  clear,  it  slipped 
into  confusion  and  became  the  outlet  for 
hitherto  unknown  emotions  in  the  hands  of 
Schiller  and  Goethe;  and,  as  soon  as  reli- 
gious toleration  was  acquired,  the  new  virtue 


190  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSDfG* 

had  to  be  kept  in  busy  practice  to  keep  the 
peace  now  seriopsly  threatened  by  the  new 
forms  of  evangelicalism,  mediasval  Catholi- 
cism, and  absolute  infidelity.  The  point  that 
Lessing  had  reached  still  remained  to  be 
reached  again  by  the  larger  multitude  with- 
out; and  during  all  the  subsequent  confusion 
and  reaction  the  eighteenth  century  perfec- 
tion of  form  and  clear  intelligence  have  had 
their  influence  in  showing  what  has  to  be 
attained  by  the  orderly  arrangement  of  our 
more  motley  knowledge.  For  with  this  last 
century  has  come  the  deluge  of  new 
thoughts,  forgotten  emotions,  the  reviving 
memory  of  the  past,  and,  supervising  all,  the 
historical  sense  which  demanded  their  intel- 
ligent arrangement.  And  along  with  the 
scientific  enlargement  of  this  century,  of 
which  those  who  do  not  comprehend  the 
physiology  of  a  common  pump  are  forever 
boasting,  is  _  the  emotional  one,  the  im- 
portance whereof  can  bo  hardly  overesti- 
mated.    The  two  are  blended,  for  example, 


FROM    OPITZ   TO  LESSIXG.  191 

in  our  dissatisfaction  with  the  vague  his- 
torical setting  of  the  eighteenth  century 
tragedies.  "]N"athan  the  Wise,"  like  all  the 
rest,  has  its  scene  laid  in  a  dim  region,  one 
that  lies  to  the  eastward,  we  may  say, 
rather  than  that  it  is  in  the  East,  and  this 
remoteness  from  historical  or  geographical 
exactness  well  represents  the  abstract  intel- 
lectual unity  of  the  whole  play.  It  was  the 
geometry  of  intellectual  discussion  which 
our  grandfathers  studied, —  some  of  our  later 
methods  may  remind  us  of  the  sports  of  tho 
kindergarten,  —  and  in  the  absence  of  local 
colour  we  see  the  absence  of  many  of  the 
conflicting  difficulties  that  embarrass  these 
questions  for  us.  This,  at  least,  may  be 
eaid,  that  ift  the  diagrams  which  expressed 
their  lucid  thought  there  is  conveyed  an 
eternal  truth  which  humanity  must  learn  in 
its  own  way,  by  experience.  The  remnant 
cannot  save  our  souls,  we  must  save  them 
ourselves,  and  their  remote  enunciation  of 
the  truth  is  the  statement  of  a  proposition 


192  PROM  OPITZ  TO   LESSDTG. 

which  we  must  solve  out  of  our  own  lives. 
That  our  answer  will  rest  on  the  same  basis 
as  that  of  Lessing  cannot  be  affirmed  any 
more  than  it  can  be  certain  that  our  best  tra- 
gedies will  be  based  on  Aristotle's  rules ;  but, 
whatever  the  future  may  have  in  store  for 
us,  the  toleration  which  Lessing  saw  will 
render  us  able  to  respect  even  an  unfamiliar 
way  of  regarding  this  momentous  question. 
"^N'athan  the  Wise"  is  scarcely  a  play; 
Lessing  himself  called  it  rather  a  dramatic 
poem,  which  exactly  defines  it,  although  it 
is  still  acted  in  the  German  theatres  with 
commendable  piety.  The  core  of  the  play 
or  poem  lies  in  the  parable  of  the  i-ings 
which  Nathan  recounts  to  Saladin,  who,  it 
may  be  fair  to  presume,  is  the  ideal  monarch 
with  a  predisposition  to  consulting  philoso- 
phers on  religion,  as  the  crowned  heads  of 
tlie  last  century,  Frederick  the  Great  and 
Catharine  of  Russia,  consulted  them  on 
questions  of  literature  and  heard  them  on 
government,  besides   following  them  in  all 


FKOM   OPITZ   TO   LESSrN^G.  193 

their  many  investigations.  The  story  was 
an  old  one,  but  it  receives  a  new  form  in 
Lessing's  hands.  The  Sultan  asks  Nathan 
what  in  his  opinion  is  the  true  religion,  and 
Nathan  answers  with  the  parable  of  a  man 
in  the  East  who  owned  a  ring  of  inestimable 
value,  which  possessed  the  secret  power  of 
endearing  to  God  and  man  the  Aveai-er  who 
believed  in  its  magic  quality.  He  be- 
queathed it  to  the  dearest  of  his  sons,  who 
in  turn  should  leave  it  to  his  dearest  son, 
and  so  on;  the  owner,  it  was  said,  by  virtue 
of  this  ring,  should  be  the  head  of  the  fam- 
ily. Finally,  the  ring  came  into  the  posses- 
sion of  the  father  of  three  sons,  who,  being 
unable  to  decide  among  them,  had  two  imi- 
tations made  so  exactly  alike  that  he  him- 
self could  not  distinguish  them,  and  these 
he  gave  to  his  sons  on  his  death-bed. 
Thereupon  arose  strife  as  to  which  was  the 
head  of  the  family.  Each  one  felt  sure 
that  his  father  had  not  deceived  him  and 
was  ready  to  accuse  his  brother  of  dishon- 


194  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

esty.  They  appealed  to  a  judge,  whose 
decision  ran  thus,  that,  inasmuch  as  the  ring 
possessed  the  magic  quahty  of  making  its 
wearer  loved,  he  need  only  find  which  of 
the  brothers  filled  that  condition.  "  What, 
none?  Then  you  are  all  deceived  deceivers. 
All  the  rings  are  false.  Probably  the  true 
ring  was  lost.  But  I  advise  each  of  you 
to  imagine  his  ring  to  be  the  true  one,  and 
to  go  away;  then  let  each  one  strive  to 
show  this  power  in  his  own  ring. 

''Let  him  aid  this  power  with  humility, 
with  earnest  tolerance  and  kindness,  with 
sincere  devotioii,"  and  in  time,  after  thou- 
sands of  thousands  of  years,  a  wiser  judge 
may  give  the  exact  answer.  In  other  words, 
righteousness  and  devotion  may  alone  solve 
the  question. 

If  this  play  is  read  simultaneously  with 
Lessing's  prose  writings  on  religion,  it  will 
be  seen  that  according  to  our  modern 
notions,  he  would  be  classified  among  or 
very  near  the  orthodox,  yet  in  his  own  day 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  195 

he  was  detested  by  the  class  that  in  a  hun- 
dred years  has  learned  to  enlarge  its  boun- 
daries. By  some  common  people  his  death, 
which  soon  followed,  was  supposed  to  be  a 
special  act  of  the  devil,  who  spirited  him 
away  miraculously;  others  maintained  that 
the  physicians,  from  a  sense  of  high  duty, 
refused  to  cure  him  when  he  was  ill ;  but  the 
more  intelligent  naturally  mourned  his  un- 
timely loss.  They  recognized  the  value  of 
his  lesson,  and,  to  speak  of  the  "  ]N'athan " 
alone,  we  may  easily  see  that  if  toleration 
is  advisable  among  Christians,  Jews,  and 
Mohammedans,  it  is  no  less  desirable  for 
atheists  and  pagans  as  well.  The  seeds  of 
thought,  j^erme/i^a  cogitationis,  which  Les- 
sing  boasted  that  he  planted,  are  true  in 
the  larger  field  because  they  are  true  in  the 
narrower  one  which  he  knew.  This  stimu- 
lation of  thought  was  his  greatest  work;  and 
since  that  task  is,  from  its  nature,  fragmen- 
tary and  never  to  be  completed,  there  is  a 
certain  roundness  at  least  in  the  choice  of 


196  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

subjects  which  he  treated.  It  did  not  fall 
to  his  lot  to  take  part  in  the  great  enlai'ge- 
raent  of  men's  interests  which  was  the  work 
of  the  romantic  school.  That  was  accom- 
plished by  a  new  generation  which  was 
already  growing  up  around  him. 

The  distinction  between  the  eighteenth 
century  and  the  present  one  is  clearly  man- 
ifested in  a  remark  of  Lessing,  which  has 
met  with  nothing  but  unqualified  approval: 
"  'Not  the  truth  of  which  anyone  is,  or  sup- 
poses himself  to  be,  possessed,  but  the  up- 
right endeavour  he  has  made  to  aim  at  truth, 
makes  the  worth  of  the  man.  For  not  by 
the  possession,  but  by  the  investigation,  of 
truth,  are  his  powers  expanded,  wherein 
alone  his  growing  perfection  consists.  Pos- 
session makes  us  easy,  indolent,  proud.  If 
God  held  all  truth  shut  in  his  right  hand, 
and  in  his  left  nothing  but  the  ever  restless 
instinct  for  truth,  though  with  the  condition 
of  for  ever  and  ever  erring,  and  should  say 
to  me,  ^  Choose ! '  I  should  humbly  bow  to 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LES8ING.  19T 

his  left  hand,  and  say,  '  Father,  give !  pure 
truth  is  for  thee  alone.'"  This  eloquent 
utterance,  however,  with  its  left-handed 
compliment  to  truth,  —  as  if  truth  were  an 
answer  to  a  puzzle,  and  not  the  only  thing 
that  makes  life  valuable,  —  is  full  of  the 
same  eighteenth  century  wisdom  that  char- 
acterizes the  remarks  of  those  men  of  the 
present  day  who  regard  education  as  some- 
thing that  does  good,  not  by  itself,  but  by 
"exercising  the  mind."  Fontenelle  had 
already  said:  "Si  j'avais  la  main  remplie  de 
verites,  je  me  garderais  bien  de  I'ouvrir,"  so 
that  Lessing  is  relieved  of  some  of  the 
opprobrium  that  might  be  hastily  accorded 
him.  But,  idHng  aside,  may  we  not  see  in 
the  latter  half  of  this  statement  not  only  the 
notion  which  Goethe  inherited  and  in  turn 
bequeathed  to  some  conservatives  of  the 
present  daj^,  that  this  world  is  created  for  the 
intellectual  delight  of  a  few  educated  people, 
but  also  that  feeling  of  dependence  on  the 
past  which  began  to  crumble  at  the  end  of 


198  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

the  eighteenth  century?  The  destruction 
of  the  Bastille  was  but  an  outward  and  vis- 
ible sign  of  the  breaking  loose  of  modern 
men  from  authority.  The  iron  chains  then 
broken  were  not  the  only  fetters  snapped; 
indeed,  modern  scholarship  may  be  said  to 
date  from  Wolf's  "Prolegomena"  (1795), 
and  modern  scholarship  has  destroyed  many 
bugbears.  It  may  be  affirmed  of  the  "Pro- 
legomena" that  they  marked  the  period 
when  modern  men  had  matured  sufficiently 
to  look  the  classics  in  the  face.  The  book 
appeared  not  long  before  Wordsworth  and 
Coleridge  began  to  found  the  new  poetry  in 
England,  and  at  the  very  time  when  real  lit- 
erature began  to  exist  in  Germany.  The  past 
had  done  its  best  work  in  educating  men 
who  spoke,  not  merely  to  the  present,  but 
to  the  future  —  the  only  grateful  audience. 
The  man  who  at  this  present  day  should 
refuse  to  grasp  the  truth,  in  order  that  he 
might  exercise  his  mind  in  searching  for  it, 
would  not  be  loved.    The  opinion  has  arisen 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSING.  199 

that  the  truth  is  perhaps  as  valuable  as 
any  one  man's  symmetrical  development ; 
for  this,  after  all,  might  be  attained  by  ex- 
ercising in  a  wholly  profitless  way,  and, 
moreover,  no  man  will  work  to  bring  out  a 
muscle  as  he  will  to  save  his  life. 

Yet,  as  nothing  starts  in  a  complete  form 
in  this  world,  we  may  see  in  some  of  Les- 
sing's  last  writings  the  forebodings  of  the 
altered  notions  that  were  to  inspire  the 
younger  men.  In  his  "Erziehung  des 
Menschengeschlechts "  there  are  distinct 
statements  of  the  growth  in  the  past,  and 
the  probable  growth  in  the  future,  of 
humanity.  "Why,"  he  asks  in  the  begin- 
ning, "why  should  we  not  rather,  in  all 
positive  religions,  regard  nothing  more 
than  the  course  in  which  the  human  under- 
standing of  every  place  alone  can  develop, 
and  must  further  develop  itself,  instead  of 
ridiculing  or  denouncing  it?  I^^othing  else 
in  the  world  deserves  our  scorn  or  wrath, 
should  religion  alone  deserve  them?    Is  it 


200  FROM  OPITZ   TO   LESSING. 

possible  that  God  should  have  his  hand  in 
everything,  but  not  in  our  errors?"  Then 
follow  the  detached  thoughts  that  make  up 
the  memorable  treatise,  wherein  he  traced 
briefly  the  growth  of  humanity :  — 

What  education  is  to  the  single  individual,  revela- 
tion is  to  the  whole  human  race. 

Education  is  revelation  coming  to  the  individual, 
and  revelation  is  education  coming  to  the  race. 

Education  gives  the  individual  nothing  that  he  had 
not  in  himself,  and  so  of  revelation,  it  gives  humanity 
nothing  to  which  reason  could  not  attain  by  its  own 
unaided  resources. 

Then  he  goes  on  to  say  that  time  may 
bring  to  the  world  a  new  revelation  which 
shall  be  to  Christianity  what  Christianity 
itself  was  to  what  went  before  it,  when  man 
will  do  right  because  it  is  right,  not  because 
it  ensures  certain  rewards. 

There  is  no  need  of  pointing  out  Lessing's 
fine  moral  enthusiasm;  what  concerns  us 
here  is  the  declaration  of  a  possible  and 
probable  development  of  humanity  in  the 
future.    Ko  longer  did  he  look  back  with 


FBOM   OPITZ   TO   LESSENG.  201 

regret  to  a  golden  past;  the  present  was 
full  of  promise,  and  there  is  here  dimly 
stated  what  was  to  be  announced  more 
clearly  by  Herder,  that  the  condition  of 
man  is  one  of  growth.  Just  before  the 
great  dramatic  revolution  broke  out,  Les- 
sing  died.  He  had  already  expressed  dis- 
satisfaction with  Goethe's  "Gotz,"  which 
indicated  no  respect  for  Aristotle,  and  for 
the  "Werther,"  wherein  was  announced 
the  new  truth  that  reason  alone  cannot 
move  the  world;  that  for  this  is  required 
the  combination  of  qualities  that  go  to  make 
up  every  human  being.*  Reason  alone  is 
as  inefficient  to  make  a  thorough  person  as 
is  muscular  strength  alone  to  make  a  man 
healthy.  Everything  that  man  undertakes 
to  produce,  whether  by  action,  word,  or  in 
whatsoever  way,  ought  to  spring  from  the 
union  of  all  his  faculties.     "All  that  is  iso- 

1  In  Lessing's  comments  on  the  novel,  he  said :  '•  Do  you 
imagine  that  a  Roman  or  Greek  youth  would  have  taken  his 
life  in  this  fashion  and  for  this  reason?  "  To  Goethe  this  was 
an  argument  as  remote  as  tlie  Greek  oracles. 


202  FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSINO. 

lated  is  contemptible,"  is  Goethe's  statement 
of  Hamann's  and  Herder's  teachings.  It 
was  this  widening  of  the  influences  that  the 
new  time  had  to  estabhsh,  and  in  j^arting 
with  Lessing  we  have  behind  us  the  man 
who,  in  his  deahngs  with  reason  alone, 
♦  showed  how  the  new  lesson  had  to  be 
taught,  —  by  theory  and  practice,  by  sin- 
cerity and  direct  study,  by  patience  and 
toleration.  The  high  mark  that  he  had 
reached  with  his  principles  had  to  be  at- 
tained anew  with  the  new  principles. 

This  may  be  a  fitting  place  to  close.  We 
have  traced  roughly  the  slow  degrees  by 
which  Germany  passed  through  its  period 
of  apprenticeship.  Everywhere,  in  foi*m  at 
least,  it  kept  step  with  the  movements  of 
thought  that  held  sway  over  all  of  Europe, 
from  Portugal  to  Korway;  for  modern  lit- 
erature is  essentially  a  .unit;  what  hap- 
pened in  one  country  rei3eated  itself  in  the 
main  in  every  other,  just  as  the  vicissitudes 
of  growth   are   repeated  in   every  human 


FROM   OPITZ   TO   LESSIN^G.  203 

being  between  his  birth  and  maturity,  with 
differences,  to  be  sure,  in  each  case,  depend- 
ing on  the  personal  characteristics.  Yet 
these  characteristics  cannot  be  properly  un- 
derstood until  it  is  discovered  how  much 
the  various  phenomena  that  we  observe  in 
the  individual  are  part  of  the  common 
experience  of  the  race.  When  this  is  done, 
it  becomes  easier  to  study  intelligently  what 
is  left.  And  there  is  certainly  enough 
left  to  reward  the  student.  Especially  in 
the  history  of  romanticism  in  Germany  does 
the  peculiar  quality  of  the  Germans  assert 
itself.  As  the  pseudo-classicism  made  its 
headquarters  in  France,  where  it  found  a 
congenial  home,  so  the  romantic  spirit  was 
more  momentous  in  Gei^many  than  else- 
where, and  found  in  Goethe  a  fuller  expres- 
sion than  in  any  other  one  man.  Perhaps 
at  some  future  time  we  may  study  the  fonn 
that  romanticism  took  in  that  land,  when 
we  may  see  how  the  confusion  of  its 
history  shut  it  off  from  that  return  to  its 


204  FROM    OPITZ    TO   LES8ING. 

own  past  which  was  an  important  part  of 
the  romantic  revival  in  England,  and  how 
the  development  of  the  qualities  that  we 
have  so  far  seen  only  in  their  crudity  gave 
Grermany  its  prominence  in  intellectual 
matters. 


IIS^DEX. 


Academies,  18;  the  French  Aca- 
demy, 18,  21. 

Addison,  Joseph,  63,  79,  80,  128, 
131, 142. 

America,  discovery  of,  its  in- 
fluence on  modem  civiliza- 
tion, 7. 

Beanty,  how  dreaded,  112. 
Besser,  J.  Von,  45,  48,  49, 
Bodmer,  J.  J.,  80 jf. 
Breitinger,  80.^. 
"Bremer  JBeitrage,"  88jr. 
Brockcs,   B.  H.,  57,  59-65,   HI, 

113, 115. 
Bnms,  Bobert,  50,  52,  63,  55, 66. 

Canitz,  F.  R.  L.,  44-49. 

Carmina  barana,  54. 

Coincidences,  alleged,  in  litera- 
ture, 09,  93. 

Collins,  William,  his  nnrhjrmed 
odes,  93. 

Criticism,  how  connected  with 
creative  work,  124  n. 


Diderot,  D.,  127, 136. 

Drama,  the  German,  78-80, 127  if. 


Eighteenth  century,  the,  som* 
qualities  of,  107-109,  189-191, 
19!>-199. 

"  Emilia  Galotti,"  173, 177-182. 

English  influence,  57,  69,  73^» 
91  ff,  134,139-142,183. 

Fleming,  P.,  53,  54. 
Fragmentariness,  not  necessarily 

a  fault,  125,  126. 
Frederick  the  Great,  153-155. 
Free  thought  at  end  of  last  ce^ 

tury,  183-189. 
French   influence,  11-13,  22,  33, 

44,  49,  75,  78,  99,  130,  138,  151^ 

153. 
Fruit-bearing  Society,  18-23. 

Genius,  common  errors  concern- 
ing, 58,  140. 

"  George  Barnwell,"  132, 148. 

Gcssner,  S.,  114, 115. 

Gleim,  J.  AV.  L.,  115, 116,  152. 

Goethe,  J.  W.,  on  "Emilia  Ga- 
lotti," 170,  181;  on  Herder,  201. 

Goldsmith,  O.,  his  literary  skill, 
150, 171. 

Gottsched,  J.  C,  75-87,  123;  lito 
conversation    with    Frederick 
the  Great,  153  j^. 
205 


206 


IKDEX. 


Greek   literature,  its   influence, 

UOff. 
Grypliius,  A.,  38,  44. 
Guntlier,  J.  C,  50-56. 

Hagcdom,  F.  von,  71, 72. 
Haiubund,  the,  llG-120. 
Elallcr,  A.  von,  C5-70. 
•*  Hamburger  Dramaturgic,"  the, 

174,//-. 
Harsdjrffcr,  G.  P.,  33,  34,  36. 
He  11  wig,  37. 
Herbert,  Geo.,  35,  38. 
Herder,  J.  G.,  124,  1G9,  202. 
Hcrrick,  R.,  34,  35,  37,  38,  39. 
Hexameter,  German  use  of,  C2. 
Hofmaun  von  Hofmaniiswaldau, 

39,  42,  43. 

Klaj,  32. 

Klopstock,  86,  89-07,  151,  166, 170. 

Kcinig,  45. 

La  Motte,  attacks  the  unities, 
133;  is  himself  denounced  by 
Voltaire,  134. 

Latin  literature,  its  influence, 
15-17,  28,  2-),  <'8,  140.(7,  152. 

Lessing,  G.  E.,  121-202;  his  "Min- 
na von  Carnhelm,"  155-107; 
his  "Emilia  Galotti,"  173,  177- 
182;  his  "Nathan  the  "Wise," 
182  105;  his  opinion  of  roman- 
.ticism,  lc;8;  of  "  Wcrther,"  201; 
his  relation  to  the  past,  172 ;  his 
"  Hamburger      Dramaturgic, ' ' 

Lillo,  George,  his  "  CJeorge  Barn- 
well," 132,  148. 

Literature,  how  to  be  studied,  2, 
3,  C8;  gradual  growth  of,   141; 


the  German,  its  early  state,  3, 

4,  10, 14;  its  decay,  5. 
Logau,  F.  von,  38. 
Lohenstein,  D.  C,  44. 

Marvcll,  A.,  34,  35. 
"  IMcssias,  "  the,  89-92, 104-5. 
Metaphysical  poets,  the,  30,  41,  42. 
Milton,  J  olui,  influence  of,  83  ff. 
"  Minna  von  Barnhclm,"  155-1G7. 
Mountains,    beginning     admira- 
tion of,  03,  C8. 

"  Nathan  the  Wise,"  182-195. 

Opitz,  Martin,  23-30;  his  "Buch 
von  der  Deutschen  Poeterei,  25, 
2G;  his  translations,  27. 

Picaresque  novels,  73. 

Plagiarism,  70,  71. 

Pope,  Alexander,  65,  G!5,  70,  85. 

Reformation,  the,  0,  10. 
Renaissance,  the,  10,  14,  18,  31, 

1C8. 
Robinson  Crusoe,  23  ff- 
Rousseau,  J.  J.,  68,  G9. 

Scaliger,  J.  C,  his  "Poetices," 
26. 

Schcffler,  38. 

Science,  influence  of,  03,  G4,  82, 
110,  142. 

Sensibility,  96  J,  117 .f,  16G,  168. 

Sentimentality,  its  importance, 
101  ff\  143,  146/. 

Spectator,  the,  its  influence,  74  jf. 

Stcmc,  L.,  110, 162. 

Switzerland,  its  assumed  Arca- 
dian simplicity,  GS;  its  real  lit- 
erary simplicity,  81. 


INDEX. 


207 


Teutonic  revival,  97, 151. 
Tliirty  Years'  War,  8-14. 
Thomson,  James,  65,  69. 

Unities,  the  three,  130,  134, 

Valentines,  their  tenacity  of  life, 
35,36. 

•'  Volkspoesie,"  52,  54,  116. 

Voltaire,  his  preference  of  Tasso 
to  Homer,  87;  his  literary  per- 
fection, 109,  150;  defending  the 
unities,  134. 


Vondel,  44. 

Voss,  J.  H.,  117-120. 


Weise,  C,  44. 

Wieland,  C.  M.,  104r-118;  the  dis- 
like of,  114-118. 
Wordsworth,  W.,  171, 198. 


Young,  E,  91. 
Zesen,  P.  von,  34. 


